


Toward the Horizon

by eliddell



Category: Lunar: The Silver Star
Genre: Action, Adventure, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 81,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Centuries after the end of Lunar:  Eternal Blue, Ghaleon finds himself returned to life yet again.  Except that this time, he doesn't know why.  And as he explores the changed world of Lunar, he becomes tangled in the affairs of Vane and of the dragons, and discovers that some things aren't so different after all . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is another several-year-old 'fic that was never very widely circulated, and which I am reproducing here in its original form, errors and all. Below is the original author's note, from mid-2008: 
> 
> \----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> 
> I doubt I'll ever be able to resist the temptation to twiddle with the life of any white-haired biseinen villain I come across. (Damnit, and just when I was getting somewhere with something else, too . . .) 
> 
> This story is based purely on the Playstation versions of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Eternal Blue Complete. I am ignoring the "Tale of the Vane Airship" manga, partly because, supposedly official or no, it outright contradicts the various versions of Lunar: Silver Star about the history of the Vile Tribe by having some of its members living in Vane centuries after Althena supposedly imprisoned them in the Frontier (but mostly because it won't let me twist Ghaleon's racial background around the way I want to). It should also be noted that, where the English and Japanese versions of the games contradict each other (as per the lists at lunar-net.com), I'm not really consistent when deciding which version to follow. ;P 
> 
> Ghaleon and a few of the other characters, not to mention the world of Lunar itself, are the creation of GameArts. I'm just borrowing them, with no commercial intent.

I awoke to the sound of waves and the smell of wet rock, and was instantly puzzled. I had been in Vane, on the dilapidated roof walk of the Magic Guild's headquarters, watching young Hiro and his friends depart on the Destiny for their confrontation with Zophar, weakening rapidly without that monster's magic to support my life, and then . . . just fading . . . I should not have been alive, so why was I lying, naked and freezing cold, on the floor of a ruined building somewhere near the ocean, with pebbles digging into my back? 

I sat up slowly, drawing my knees up to my chest to trap a little warmth, and looked around. The style of the masonry here was familiar, although the building hadn't been open to the sky the last time I'd seen it. This was Althena's Tower in Pentagulia. Somehow, part of it had survived being swallowed by Zophar . . . which still didn't answer the question of what I was doing here. Even if I'd been somehow revived again, this wasn't where I had died this time. When Zophar had revived me, I'd returned to the world on what was left of the roof of the Goddess Tower . . . naked and freezing cold, come to think of it. 

I laughed, hearing echoes bounce back from the walls. Being brought back from death once had been unlikely. Thinking that someone might consider me important enough to bring back twice was the height of hubris. 

"And yet," I said aloud, my smile fading, "I'm here." Absently, my hand rose to rub my left cheekbone, where the union between my flesh and the strange metallic substance Zophar had used to replace the missing bit of my body had always been itchy and easily irritated . . . and found only smooth skin. I was . . . whole again? 

A gust of wind snuck through a chink in the walls and made me shiver, and I decided to deal with the less important but more immediately urgent matter of survival before I went back to worrying about what I was doing here. The moss on the walls wasn't enough to serve as a decent basis for a magical tailoring spell, but the sea always threw up more discarded organic matter than anyone but a seagull had any use for. If I descended to the water, I should be able to find something I could transform into cloth, and then into clothes. The trick would be to negotiate the ruins without slashing my feet open on rock fragments. 

Perhaps half and hour later, I was sitting on a block of stone near the old dock and wondering how long I had been gone this time. I'd been able to conjure myself clothing of a sort—a shirt and trousers whose colour still betrayed their origin as a clump of dead seaweed, and a pair of greenish rope sandals that were almost more awkward than going barefoot. Fortunately, despite the rising wind and louring grey clouds, it was a mild day. 

Pentagulia was clearly long-deserted. The tower was the only building still even partially intact, and the others had clearly been in their present state for years—long enough for deposits of sand and soil to accumulate anywhere that was half- sheltered, and for a tree as thick as my calf to sprout on the landward side of what was left of the Blue Tower. Decades, if not centuries. 

In the meanwhile, I had two problems. The more important one—not knowing why I was here—seemed intractable at present, so I had again decided to worry about the more urgent one: that of getting off Pentagulia. Teleportation was possible, but risky when I couldn't visualize my destination. It might be safer to wait a few days and see if a ship came near enough for me to signal it—there was nothing like shooting a fireball spell straight up in the air for attracting attention. Once it came within range, I could take the damned thing over if I needed to. That would mean a few days of living off bread conjured from seaweed, though, and Althena only knew how the stuff would taste. I sighed, and wished for what had to be the first time that I'd been more interested in spells for making things than in spells for blowing things up. The latter had seemed more useful at the time—why bother learning complex creation magic when I could just kill a monster, take its silver, and use that to buy whatever I wanted? I hadn't anticipated being stranded somewhere that had no craftsmen or shopkeepers—or monsters either, for that matter. 

"An oversight," I said to a seagull that had landed a few feet away. It glared at me, first out of one eye, then the other, and I resisted the temptation to throw a rock at it, just to have something to do other than stare at the horizon, brood, and talk to random birds as a way to avoid talking to myself. My worst enemy, if I had to stay here for long, was going to be boredom . . . or possibly the weather, since I could now see lightning flickering far off on the horizon. I was going to need to take shelter soon if I didn't want to be soaked. 

I rose to my feet, gathered my will, spoke the keyword of the appropriate spell, and teleported to the tower-top where I had first appeared. It was a better place for watching the horizon, anyway, or would be after I'd blown out what was left of the walls, and I would be able to duck quickly down the stairs when the rain came. 

I was on the verge of doing just that when one of the lightning-flashes illuminated something that wasn't a wave. A sail . . . ? Yes, there it was again—and nearer! Was it looking to shelter from the storm in the old harbour? 

I teleported myself back down to the dock, and spent a moment leaning against the rock I'd been sitting on mere minutes ago and catching my breath. I'd forgotten how using that spell twice so close together drained me when I didn't have the power of a demon or a dragon or a goddess to back me. I'd be wise to wait an hour or so before trying it again, even if it meant getting soaked in the rain. 

The sail was looming closer now, and I stood watching it grow even larger as the first few drops of rain began to fall. By the time it was nosing into the harbour, I was soaked to the skin, my conjured clothes plastered to my body. 

_What a fool I must seem,_ I thought as the ship nosed in between fingers of crumbling stone and someone tossed an anchor overboard. The waves were high, splashing salt over my feet. Lightning flashed, giving me a momentary glimpse of the banner flying from the top of the mast. The style in which it was recorded was unfamiliar, but the symbol itself I knew—a ship's wheel and two oars set on a blue background, arranged like the skull and crossbones of a pirate's flag. Hell Mel's idea of a joke, it denoted a ship of Meribian registry. 

Another lightning flash showed me two faces, blank and white, staring at me over the side. 

"Halloo!" With the lightning gone, I couldn't tell if the person shouting was one of those at the rail, or someone else . . . but the plank being manoeuvred over the side was clear enough. 

"Thank you!" I shouted back, and began climbing a ramp of wet, slippery rubble to where the wood rested on stone. 

Fortunately, I've always had a good sense of balance, because the plank bucked under my feet like a live thing. I still ended up dropping one sandal into the water when I almost missed a step, and kicked the other off with a grimace of irritation. Then I was vaulting the rail onto the deck, and someone was throwing a blanket over my shoulders. I wrapped myself closely in the stinking wet wool and let myself be drawn under cover, down a flight of steps and through a door that led into the crew's hammock-strung living space—the ship was far too small to have cabins. 

"See? He ain't no ghost, this one." That was one of the crew, a short, squat beastman with a thick brown beard, presumably grown to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. 

_Nice to have some independent confirmation of that,_ I thought—especially since I hadn't been entirely sure of it myself. 

"Then what in hell was he doing on the Haunted Isle?" another man asked. 

"I was washed overboard during a storm," I improvised. "How I ended up where I did, I have no idea—I was half dead by the time I found that place." Hopefully, they wouldn't ask me for the name of the ship I'd been on, or its port of registry . . . 

"So who are you?" That was a tall man—no, another beastman, and as I looked around me, I saw that they all had the characteristic large, mobile, pointed ears, and many of them had single horns sprouting from their foreheads as well—red-haired, a bit better-dressed than the others, who'd pushed his way forward through the crowd. 

"My name is Gha—" Then I thought better of it—who knew what kind of reputation I might have in today's world? The memory of the Magic Emperor had survived a thousand years to be thrown back in my face . . . I faked a cough. "Galin," I finished. It wasn't a brilliant choice, but it did have the advantage of being close enough to my real name that I might remember to answer to it. "I'm a mage." 

"Prove it," the redhead challenged. 

I extended a cupped hand and spoke the keyword of a light spell, letting the misty ball of radiance hover there for long enough for him to get a good look before I snuffed it. 

"I suppose I should thank you for rescuing me," I added over the murmurs of the sailors. "I might have been trapped on that island for a long time, if you hadn't come along." 

"Don't thank us just yet," the redhead retorted. "The captain hasn't given his approval, so you may find yourself right back on Penglia Island as soon as he wakes up. And he doesn't much like mages—or freaks." 

Freaks, yes. Pale, silver-haired, pointed-but-not- beast-eared, strange-eyed freaks with tremendous magical power. I'd often wondered myself who my parents had been—in fact, curiosity about where I'd come from before I'd been found as an infant outside Althena's Shrine had been one of the things that had led to my contacting the Vile Tribe in the first place, all those years ago . . . but although some of them did have eyes and ears and hair similar to mine, I lacked the distinctive skin markings that were characteristic of their race. 

In the end, I hadn't belonged there, either. At the time, I'd been surprised at how much that had hurt. 

"If you're done with the personal insults, you might consider introducing yourself," I said dryly. 

The redhead laughed. "You don't scare easy, do you? I like that. My name's Aklo—I'm the First Mate on this tub. So, Galin, you know anything about sailoring?" 

"A friend tried to teach me once, a long time ago," I said, "but I must admit that I don't really remember much." Nor had I been a very good student. Mel had been thoroughly disgusted with me by the time he'd given up. And it wasn't going to matter this time, either. If the captain tried to throw me off this tub, I'd cast a charm spell on him and that would be that. Oh, I wasn't going to _hurt_ the man, just . . . persuade . . . him to carry me along to their next port of call. 

_I must be getting soft,_ I thought, and yet . . . they would have approved, more or less—or at least, more of that than they would have of my threatening the entire ship into submission. Dyne. Alex. Hiro. And maybe even my unknown parents. 

Aklo snorted. "Well, no matter. You'll be of more use to us if you can fix broken cold-lanterns, anyway." The ship heaved under us, and the light in a back corner of the room went out in a crash and tinkle of broken glass. "Like that one." 

"I think I can manage." After all, I had supervised enough apprentices making the things. Cold-lanterns and fireless cooking devices had been among the more popular items sold on Meribia's Black Rose Street, back in the day—fires at sea are . . . messy, so no shipmaster wants open flames on board his ship if he can avoid it—and every single one of them had been manufactured in Vane. And, fortunately, the glass-shaping spells to create the blanks were easy too, mostly a matter of heating the damned stuff up and stretching it with invisible hands . . . "Sweep up what's left of that one, and I'll see what I can do with it." It would be something to pass the time, anyway. 

"I'm not sure that Father would approve of that." The comment came from the back of the room somewhere. 

Aklo rolled his eyes. "Lad, your father approves of anything that'll save him money, or hadn't you noticed? If Galin here can fix those broken lanterns, that'll be several thousand silver additional profit from this trip." 

The ship heaved again, staggering me into a wall. Fortunately, I had never been the sort to get seasick. Even a few of the sailors were looking a bit green and unsteady. Indeed, one unfortunate person from the back of the room ended up sliding across the floor on his hands and knees, narrowly missing knocking Aklo over. Oddly enough, though, that person wasn't a sailor, but a youth of perhaps sixteen wearing what looked like it was supposed to be a magician's robe. An apprentice? 

"Why would you need him when you've got me?" the boy spat. 

"Because you haven't mastered the lantern-spell yet," said the bald, brown-bearded man who'd spoken to me earlier. Several of the sailors chuckled. 

I slid down to a sitting position against the wall and began to towel my hair . . . well, perhaps not dry, but at least damp, with a corner of my blanket. "Under the circumstances, it's irrelevant, anyway," I observed. "It's unsafe to do the type of magic involved in putting those lanterns back together on board a wooden ship in a storm. I'll talk to your captain when he's available. In the meanwhile, get that glass swept up before someone steps on it." 

"We don't take orders from—" 

"It's all right, Jal," Aklo said. "The man's right. Go get a damned broom." But he gave me a long look before turning away. "And aren't you two supposed to be topside, on watch? Get moving!" 

There was more, but I ignored it. How long had it been since I had last interacted with normal humans without the protection of a title between myself and them? Even before I'd been Magic Emperor Ghaleon, I'd been one of the Four Heroes and a high officer in Vane's Magic Guild. And now I was . . . what? _Besides confused, that is._

The mage-apprentice had crawled over to sit beside me and was looking at me with a peculiar glint in his eye. Upon closer examination, his robe looked . . . not quite right, to my eye, as though it was an attempted copy of a mage's robe, rather than the real thing, but more likely it was just that styles had changed while I'd been . . . out of circulation. Getting a better look at his face, I also revised his age downward—I doubted that he was more than fourteen—and his facial markings and little nub of horn told me that he was yet another beastman. 

"What are you, anyway? Some kind of hybrid?" 

I ignored the questions. I was going to have to practice that—ignoring things—if I didn't want to end up burning this miserable boat to the waterline. I could charm the captain, if need be, but not the entire crew for the entire length of our voyage. 

"You're used to giving orders, aren't you? My father isn't going to like that." 

I sighed, and concluded that this idiot boy wasn't going to go away until I interacted with him somehow. For my own amusement as much as anything, I traced a pattern in the air between us with the thumb and forefinger of my left hand, and snorted as it glowed a sullen, flickering orange. 

"No wonder you can't even complete a simple apprentice-level spell like charming a cold lantern," I said. "Hasn't your master—whoever he is—taught you anything about focussing your will yet? You're a disgrace to those robes." 

The youth went beet-red. "Damn you!" 

"Meloth!" 

I looked up. The big beastman looming over us was glaring at the youth. He was also trying to straighten his jacket, to little effect. His clothes looked like they'd been slept in. 

"But, Dad—" 

I pushed myself back to my feet, knowing that my height was the only impressive-looking thing about me at the moment. I let the borrowed blanket hang about my shoulders like a cloak, hoping that it would help hide the sorry excuse for a shirt and trousers that was only now starting to dry enough to peel away from my skin. There was nothing I could do about being barefoot. 

"You're the captain of this ship, I take it," I said. "I need passage away from here." 

The big beastman ignored my words, instead giving me a once-over. "Huh. No fangs, horn, or stripes, and your ears don't look like ours _or_ like a human's . . . not one of us, but not one of them, either. Maybe you'll do." 

I gave him a sharp look. "I don't think I've ever met anyone who was nearly as interested in ferreting out my racial background as you people seem to be. Why does it matter so much to you?" I was starting to get a sense that things were very wrong here. It was true that, at one time in Lunar's history, humans and beastmen hadn't gotten along very well, but that had been so long before my time that, when I'd been a young hero, only the dragons could remember that era personally. 

The big beastman snorted. "What hole have you been living in? Sure, twenty years ago it might not have mattered, but since the massacres—" 

"What massacres?" I asked, even more sharply. 

"You really have been living in a hole, haven't you?" 

"I've been . . . out of circulation for a while," I more- or-less agreed, although his tone set my teeth on edge. It was fortunate for the beastman in front of me that charm spells aren't all that effective as a method of information extraction, or I might have lost my temper and clamped down on him, not caring that Dyne wouldn't have approved. How could creatures that wielded the kind of power that humans did be so compulsively stupid and bullheaded? "What massacres?" I repeated—and if he didn't answer me this time, I was going to show him why it wasn't wise to irritate a master wizard, and damn the consequences. 

It was the boy who responded, though. "Twenty years ago, every single beastman in Vane was killed—members of the Magic Guild and townsfolk both. That's why I can't do even what you claim is an apprentice-level spell right," he added bitterly. "There are no beastman mages left for me to apprentice to, so I've been trying to teach myself out of books." 

The captain added, "There were some deaths in Meribia, too. They say it was the human members of the Magic Guild carrying out a purge, although the Magic Guild itself claims that they had nothing to do with it and the attack came from the outside. Of course, no one believed them, and the families of those killed wanted revenge, and from there . . ." He shook his head. "Let's just say things got messy, and having those damned wizards lie about it didn't help matters. Me, I joined up with a group that was heading for the Outer Islands, and this is the closest I've been to the mainland since, registered out of Meribia or no. Damned storm sent us a long way off course, almost to the edge of our charts." 

"Which gets us back to the matter of transport," I said. 

The big beastman snorted. "Oh, don't worry—I wouldn't leave even a human stranded on Penglia Island. I'll take you on to Saith . . . but I'd appreciate it if you'd do me a little favour in return." 

I raised an eyebrow. "What kind of favour?" Unfortunately, I had a feeling I knew what was coming. 

"Teach my son," the captain said, spreading his hands. "At least the basics, so that he'll get some good out of those books he's always reading." 

Somehow, I'd been expecting that to be exactly what he'd ask for.


	2. Chapter 2

I was sitting at the edge of the pool at the center of my faerie garden when I heard the voice—a woman's voice, speaking my name. 

"Ghaleon." 

Instantly, I was on my feet, reaching for a sword that wasn't there. My hand brushed only the silk of my tunic. 

"Ghaleon," the voice repeated, and this time, when I glanced swiftly around the garden, I saw her, the blue-haired woman with a face familiar from a thousand statues—and one terrible day in my youth—standing in the doorway that led to the upper part of the building. 

"You don't exist anymore," I said. "And, since I don't recall coming here, logically, this must be a dream." 

Althena smiled. "You were always too intelligent for your own good," she said in a surprisingly affectionate tone. "Too much knowledge, brilliance, and perception, but not nearly enough wisdom, faith, love, or joy . . . that is what has so often led you astray." 

"Does that make me a failed experiment?" I asked amusedly. 

She shook her head. "You were a surprise, not an experiment. Something that I never expected, or planned . . . You are, by the way, quite correct in a sense: I no longer exist as a coherent entity. However, at the same time, there is a fragment of me inside every living being on Lunar, be they human or animal, dragon or beastman . . . even the survivors of the Vile Tribe bear me within them. And it is the fragment of me that rests within you that speaks to you now. You could think of me as your conscience." 

"And my conscience has developed a sudden need to speak to me . . . why, exactly?" I asked. 

"Dear Ghaleon." Her smile was still there, quiet and sweet. "You must have already guessed: my world is being torn apart again, my creatures being set against each other by one who means them no good . . . and this time, I have no Alex, no Hiro to call upon. This time, you are the only hope I have been able to find." 

I laughed, long and loud. "If I needed proof that you weren't the true Althena, that would have provided it. After everything I've done, the goddess would have no reason to ever trust me again." 

"Unless she wanted to salvage two things from this instead of just one: Lunar, and you. You have shown, over and over again, that you can be as powerful a force for good as for evil . . ." 

Something invisible kicked me in the ribs. 

". . . Ghaleon . . ." 

Then I was no longer standing in my garden, but lying on the floor of the crew's quarters aboard the nameless ship that had picked me up from the remains of Pentagulia, wrapped in a stinking woolen blanket. A dark shape loomed above me, silhouetted against the glow of the cold-lanterns. It drew back its foot to kick again, and I grabbed for its other, supporting leg, using what force I could bring to bear to tumble it down beside me onto the boards. 

"You're lucky I didn't put an ice spear through your vitals," I told Meloth moments later as I leaned over him, one knee planted firmly in the pit of his stomach. 

"You son of a bitch—" 

"That's 'Master Galin' to you," I overrode. "I don't know why I let your father convince me to be your teacher, even temporarily—" Well, no, I did know: because it would make it less likely that he'd decide I was a human after all and complicate things by trying to pitch me overboard, but the boy didn't need to know that. "—but while you are my student, you will show me proper respect, is that clear?" 

"Crystal," the boy growled. 

"Good." I got my feet under me and rose smoothly to a standing position. The floor was barely moving, so I assumed the storm was over. "Why did you wake me?" 

"Father asked me to see if you wanted breakfast before we cast off." 

My stomach promptly growled, reminding me that I hadn't eaten since waking up in the ruined tower. "Lead the way." 

Breakfast wasn't much—half a mug of water with a trace of wine in it, and a chunk of ship's biscuit—but it was handed out up on deck. I leaned on the rail while I soaked the biscuit in my mug, trying to soften it enough so that it wouldn't break my teeth, since a tentative nibble had shown it to be a close cousin of the stuff Mel had always told the rest of us horror stories about. 

It was a beautiful day. The storm had blown over and left no sign of itself behind except an assortment of wrack that had washed up onto the dock. Above our heads hung the Blue Star . . . which was starting, here and there, to acquire a bit of a green tinge. 

"Lucia seems to be making progress," I said thoughtfully. 

"Who's Lucia?" Meloth was sitting on a coil of rope a few feet from me. I still hadn't quite figured out what he was thinking—it was clear that he didn't like me, but at the same time, he didn't seem to want to let me out of his sight. Did he really want to learn magic that badly? 

"You might call her the guardian deity of the Blue Star, much as Althena is the guardian of Lunar." The biscuit had swollen to nearly twice its size, making it difficult to pull out of the mug, but when I tentatively tried another taste of it, it turned out to have softened to a reasonable consistency. "Thousands of years ago, she was charged with preparing the Blue Star for humanity's return." 

"Superstition," the young beastman said. 

I laughed. "You want to be a mage, and yet you worry about superstitions? My, my, we may have even more work to do than I thought. Do you even believe in Althena?" 

Meloth snorted. "That there's some power in those old statues is undeniable, but I don't believe a goddess put it there." 

"Then who do you believe _did_ enchant all those statues?" I asked lazily, finishing my biscuit and drinking off the few swallows left in the mug, crumbs and all. 

The youth shrugged. "The shrines tend to attract people with healing magic. _They_ could have done it." 

"What a fascinating theory." I flicked sodden biscuit crumbs off my shirt and onto the dock, and watched gulls dive after them. Then I turned my attention fully to my temporary apprentice. "It is, however, completely incorrect. And dangerous." 

" _Dangerous?_ Now _that_ has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." 

"Dangerous," I repeated. Two strides brought me over to stand beside him, and, while Meloth was already as broad in the shoulders as I was, he was still a good head shorter, even standing. Seated, his head barely came to my chest. "Magic is a gift of Althena. We who inhabit her creation possess it only because she released her spirit among us. Believing that you are _entitled_ to your power and that it can never be taken away from you is one of the surest paths to losing your abilities altogether." Even I'd never taken my gifts _for granted_. Back in my "Magic Emperor" days, I'd planned things carefully to make certain I'd always had a power source. 

The boy turned away, gazing out over the dock, and beyond it, toward the horizon. "My father doesn't really believe I have any 'abilities' at all." 

"And yet, he asked me to teach you." Still, I had a feeling we were beginning to get to the heart of the matter. 

Meloth scowled. "He's hoping that once a real mage tells me I have no talent, I'll give up." 

"He's wrong—you do have at least some talent. Remember this?" I raised my left hand and traced the same symbol with my thumb and forefinger as I had when we'd first met, and this time, nodded in satisfaction when it flared its sullen orange. "If you had no magic at all, the symbol would fade instead of lingering. Until you learn to focus your power, there's no way for me to tell exactly how much of it you have, but the basic magical ability is there. You also have an affinity for fire magic . . . which means that I won't be teaching you any combat spells while we're aboard ship, even though the unrestrained release of energy is the simplest form of magic." 

The boy's scowl had become a thoughtful frown. "It's the colour, right? Red or orange for fire magic, blue for water . . ." 

"Greenish or silver for wind," I supplied, "and gold for earth. Those are the most common affinities—there are rarer ones." 

"And your affinity, Master Galin?" Respect at last. Apparently, all that had been needed was for me to encourage his dreams, rather than treat him the way his father had been. Perhaps working with him would be tolerable after all. 

"Is one of the rarer ones—although affinities don't matter once you get past a certain point in your training." Feeling oddly indulgent, I traced the same symbol above my right hand, still gripping the crude wooden mug, and watched his eyes widen as it flared brilliant white, like the heart of a star. "Ice magic— also transportation magic. Related to both wind and water, although more closely to the former. The symbol is bright because my talent is both strong and focussed." 

Meloth nodded, and the expression on his face spoke more of concentration than resentment. Good. 

I tapped him on the shoulder with my empty mug. "Take this to wherever it's supposed to be, then gather up the remains of that cold-lantern that broke during the storm yesterday—and any other broken ones that may be on board—and bring it here. That spell's as good a one to start with as any." It did require a little more fine control than I would normally ask of an apprentice just starting out, but Meloth seemed to want to learn badly enough that I didn't think that would be a problem— he'd continue to work at it until he got it right. Noting a flash of irritation cross his face, however, I added, "Apprentices— especially beginning ones—always end up doing scutwork for their masters, boy. It's part of the price you pay for the opportunity to learn. Now, go." I dropped the mug, and he caught it before it hit the deck. _Good reflexes,_ I noted as he scurried off. 

I went back to my position against the railing, out of the way of the sailors, and watched the ocean as they began preparations for casting off. Inevitably, my mind returned to the dream from which Meloth had woken me. 

If I was Althena's only hope for sorting out the current situation, did that mean that it was some vestige of her power, reaching forward in time, that had drawn me back into the world? It wasn't a _good_ answer, really, but it was the only one I had come up with so far that made any kind of sense. _Hmph._

So, on to more practical questions. At some point, and largely without realizing that I'd done so, I'd decided that I _was_ going to investigate what had happened to create this rift between humans and beastmen—dreams aside, it gave me something to _do_ other than wander around aimlessly. So where did I start? The ship was a closed environment, so I was going to have to be very careful about what questions I asked while I was here, or I'd be back in the messy situation of having to keep the sailors from tossing me overboard. Perhaps there would be someone who knew something at Port Saith, or in Burg if it still existed and the relevant geography was as I remembered it, but sooner or later, I was going to have to go to the mainland. Consideration of methods was going to have to wait until I got a look at the situation in Saith, however. 

_Back to Vane again,_ I thought with a sigh. Well, it seemed inevitable that I would end up there sooner or later. 

"Master Galin?" 

Meloth was at my elbow, gingerly holding a canvas sack. 

"There are four broken ones," my temporary apprentice explained. "There used to be more, but Father sold them off for glass scrap." 

"Hmph. Will we be out of the way here?" I asked. The ship was out of the harbour now and beginning to pick up speed, so there were fewer sailors rushing about, but I knew so little about sailing that it paid to make sure. 

"Unless the wind comes around to the starboard quarter, this should be all right." 

"Fair enough. Open the bag, then, so that I can have a look." 

Shards of glass mixed with dust and dirt . . . well, most of it would burn off, and a few speckles wasn't likely to diminish the usefulness of the lanterns to the beastman sailors. 

I murmured the keyword of the spell that would float the contents of the bag into the air, where the heat of my next magic wasn't likely to make anything catch fire, and then added the word that would invoke the blast furnace spell. The glass glowed with heat and slowly melted, with little tongues of flame rising for an instant here and there as some of the impurities were burnt off. Guiding the white-hot mass with my mind and a series of small hand gestures, I divided it into four and shaped each portion into a hollow globe (each with one slightly flattened side, for ease of storage and handling), and then invoked one final spell to suck the heat away. I dropped one of the finished globes in Meloth's lap, and returned the other three to the sack. 

The young beastman handled the globe gingerly. "It's still warm." Unexpectedly, he smiled. "You know, I've never seen anything like that before—and neither have they, I'll bet." 

Naturally, we'd acquired an audience: nearly a dozen beastman sailors, many of them holding buckets of salt water at the ready. When I raised an eyebrow and gave them a quick once-over, most of them made grumbling noises and turned away, reaching for mops or ropes or the other tools of their assigned duties, but three or four lingered. I snorted, remembering Mel de Alkirk's wild tales of voyages so long that the sailors would do anything to break the monotony of shipboard life, and resolved to ignore them. 

"It's your turn now," I said, and the boy swallowed visibly. 

"Um, you know . . . it's . . . I've never actually gotten a spell to work," he said in a rush, and gave me a defiant glare. "Really work, I mean. I can make light spells sort of work sometimes, for a few seconds, and I once blew up a candle trying to light it, but . . ." He hunched his shoulders sullenly. 

"That's better than I would have expected," I said soothingly. "Magic is difficult to learn without a teacher . . . and it's normal for apprentices with a fire or lightning affinity to spend a portion of their early careers blowing things up even if they _are_ being properly taught. However, there aren't going to be any explosions today. Hold that globe in your hands . . . yes, like that. I'm going to enchant this first one _through_ you, so that you learn what focused magic feels like, and then you're going to work on duplicating that feeling." It was one of the common teaching methods used in Vane. Some apprentices _do_ focus spontaneously—I had—but most require help. 

Now I leaned forward and touched his temples lightly, with my fingertips. "Close your eyes," I ordered, and, to my surprise, was immediately obeyed. "Good. Now . . ." Instead of just voicing a keyword, I ran through the entire chant for creating a lightglobe, slowly gathering and extending my focus through Meloth, into the glass, and kindling light there. "You see? Like that." I lowered my hands and sat back. 

The boy's eyes flew open. "Oh. That's . . . but it's so _simple_ ," he said, gazing down at the now-illuminated globe. "Thank you, Master." And he bestowed another smile on me. 

" _Simple_ does not mean _easy_ ," I warned. "You say you know a light spell. Try it." 

Cupping his hands palm up, the young beastman began to chant. I stopped him twice to correct his pronunciation, and when he reached the end, light flickered for a moment, then went out. 

"Again," I instructed. "Until you get it right." 

It was, I reflected, going to be a long day . . . but probably not as long as it would have been if I'd had nothing to do but stare out to sea with my thoughts chasing each other in circles.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was still bright when we reached Saith's harbour, several days later. I stood in the bow, leaning on the back of the figurehead, as a small pilot boat drew us up to the docks. 

I remembered Saith as a little town—a fishing village with delusions of grandeur, really—but that had been more than a thousand years ago, and it had grown in my absence. While it was still no Meribia, it had reached what would have been considered a respectable size even on the continent, and the harbour was crowded. Judging from what I could make out of the docks and the shore, the normal human residents were outnumbered at least four to one by the beastmen who had taken refuge here. 

"Strange," I said as I heard someone come up behind me. "I didn't think there would be any humans here at all, after the way you behaved when you found me." 

"Those are _our_ humans," the captain said gruffly. "And most of the younger ones have some beastman blood, anyway. There've been a lot of mixed marriages." 

And apparently, none of them had ever produced anything quite like me, conclusively disproving one of my few surviving theories about my origins. In a way, that made me feel . . . almost cheerful. I'd grown accustomed to being unique. 

"But that isn't what I wanted to talk to you about." 

I turned away from the harbour so that I could get a look at him. The big beastman was holding a small pouch in one hand, and looked almost sheepish. I waited patiently, eyebrows raised, for him to continue. 

"Um, here," was the best he could manage as he thrust the pouch in my direction. As I took it, I heard a metallic clink from inside. Curious, I undid the drawstring and poured the contents into the palm of my hand. 

_My, this is . . . unexpected._ Almost four thousand silver. He had to want something of me, to be offering such a generous payment. 

The captain shuffled his feet on the deck. "That's what I'd have to pay to replace two of those cold lanterns you fixed, less the cost of your passage. In return, I was wondering if you could . . . well . . . Meloth's a fair ways from being a full- fledged mage yet, isn't he?" 

Oh, yes, I could see where this was going. "The normal course of study at Vane used to take eight years, on average," I said dryly. 

The big beastman blanched. " _Eight . . ._ " 

"Granted, while your son isn't the most brilliant or talented student I've ever had, his determination is exceptional, so he might be able to shave a year or so off that, given the right teacher," I said. All right, I admit it, I was enjoying playing with him—we all have to have our little amusements. "Learning from books, it'll probably take him half again as long, but he _is_ good enough to become a full mage eventually—you have my word on that." 

"Eight years," the captain repeated, shaking his head. "Well, I suppose it isn't that much longer than he'd need to finish an apprenticeship in some other trade. What I was wondering was, well, whether you'd be willing to keep him on as your apprentice?" 

From somewhere further back on the ship came a cry of "Ahoy, the land!" as a mooring rope was tossed over the side. A few moments later, the ship jerked slightly as it came to the end of its tether. 

The captain's request was precisely the one I had expected, and it cut two ways. On the one hand, having an extra person to whom I couldn't explain what I was doing tagging along with me would inevitably be awkward, but on the other, the people of the island might be more willing to talk to me if I were in the company of a beastman. 

"While I remain on the island, I can continue teaching him," I said. "However, I doubt it would be wise for me to take him back to the mainland with me." 

The big beastman's shoulders relaxed a bit. "No, you're right—it wouldn't be. All right, I'll go tell him the good news." 

"Wait," I said as he began to turn away. "I have a question for you as well. I think I know where we are, but my knowledge of this area is thoroughly out of date. How many settlements are there on this island now?" 

"Still just the two—Burg and Saith." 

Then he left me to contemplate what I'd just learned. 

If they were paying two thousand silver for a single cold-lantern—a thousand percent increase over what the devices had cost at the time of my previous resurrection—either rampant inflation had reduced the value of silver to almost nothing in Saith, or these people really were mageless and cut off from the mainland. That was going to complicate the business of getting off the island . . . although it did mean that, now that he had mastered the cold-lantern spell, my temporary apprentice might have a lucrative future ahead of him even if he never learned how to cast anything else. 

But at least Burg was still there. The thought was . . . bittersweet, I suppose. I couldn't say that I had _many_ memories of the place, exactly, but most of the ones I did have were either intensely good or intensely bad. On the one hand, Dyne and his family had always welcomed me as their own . . . on the other, the last time I'd been there, with Alex, just before I'd begun to put my old plans for Lunar into motion . . . 

I sighed. _I'm thinking too much, aren't I? You always used to say that, didn't you, Mel, just before trying to pour a pint of your beloved ale down me . . ._

"Master Galin? Do you want to stay on board tonight?" Meloth's tone made it clear that, if so, I'd be the only one. 

I tossed the pouch his father had given me, caught it, and tied the drawstring onto the length of rope I was using as a belt—rope not being in short supply on board the ship. "Merely considering what purchases I need to make, boy. I assume you know where everything is in this town." 

"Of course." 

"Then I expect you to be my guide." 

I suppressed my smile as firmly as Meloth did his groan. 

Two hours or so later, I was rummaging through a rack of swords at the local weapon shop, looking for something workable that fell within my price range. I was also clean, well- fed, and wearing clothes that _fit_ , including a pair of good, sturdy boots. All in all, I felt two hundred percent better than I had when I'd disembarked from the _Wave Rider_ with Meloth in tow. 

"Master Galin, do you actually know how to _use_ one of those?" 

I shifted my grip on the sword that I was testing for flexibility, balance, and sharpness, and whirled sharply to rest its point in the hollow of my apprentice's neck. 

"Yes, I know how to use 'one of these'," I said gently, once more trying not to laugh at the expression on the boy's face as he slowly and cautiously swallowed. Dyne had pulled something similar on me once, although admittedly he'd been using a wooden practice sword. I'm not sure he would have done it with steel—probably not, when the other party was someone whose reactions he couldn't predict. It made me wonder if I'd grown reckless. 

"Oh." 

"This one's balance is imperfect," I added, laying the blade across my fingers to find the exact point, "but it will do if I can't find anything better." 

In the end, I couldn't—one rarely finds masterwork swords in outlying towns, after all. I wasn't entirely unhappy to have some silver left over, either—enough to let me add a pair of metal bracers and a short chainmail tunic that more-or-less fit to my purchases. I'd worn some kind of armour for so long—first as the Magic Emperor, and then when I'd been playing false Dragonmaster for Zophar—that I felt rather naked without it. Meloth didn't even ask this time, just watched as I snapped the bracers into place and disentangled my hair from the chain after pulling it over my head. I had perhaps fifty silver left, which would hopefully be enough for a night or two at the inn, plus a rudimentary travel kit. 

The sun was beginning to creep down toward the horizon when we left the shop. 

"Is there anywhere else you need to go?" my temporary apprentice asked, looking longingly off in a northerly direction. 

I shrugged. "I need somewhere to stay. After you point me at an inn, you're free of obligations for the night." 

"Um . . . I thought . . . now that my brother and my sisters have moved out, we've got plenty of spare bedrooms . . ." 

"I'm not certain that's wise," I said. 

"I am," my apprentice said, voice suddenly firm. "My mother's going to want to meet you. If you don't come, she'll probably hold me hostage in the morning." 

To see whether the person who had temporary custody of her precious child was trustworthy, no doubt. I sighed and gave in. "Very well. Lead the way." 

"The way" turned out to wind through some alleys from which the sun had already faded. Even my excellent night vision was barely sufficient to tell me what I was about to step onto, but Meloth didn't seem to be bothered by the situation, and I assumed he knew what he was doing. 

Or at least I did until I heard the scrape of steel on stone coming from behind and above me. I spun, bringing my left arm up, and was just barely in time to block the knife as the assassin dropped down from above. 

"Master Galin? What—" 

"Stay behind me!" I snapped. 

There was no time for anything. My opponent, visible only as an ill-defined shadow, rushed me, and I barked out the keyword to an ice spell, causing a forest of cold, white spears to rise from the ground between us. He wasn't able to stop his rush, and impaled himself. Simple. 

As the ice melted back into the ground, I strode forward, pinned the blade of the man's knife to the ground with one foot, and grabbed him by the hair. Hauling him up so that I could look him properly in the eye, I asked, "Who sent you?" 

All I got for my trouble was a wad of bloody spittle aimed at my face, and shaking the man by the hair in an effort to extract compliance only caused him to lose consciousness. I checked his pulse, and spat a curse that probably hadn't been spoken on the face of Lunar since the Vile Tribe left the Frontier. 

"Dead," I added, and dropped the body, hearing the squelch as it landed in a pool of its own blood. Irritably, I wiped my face clean with the back of my hand, then summoned a light spell and began going through the dead man's pockets. 

"Master, what are you doing?" 

"Seeing if there's any clue to who he was." My glare made Meloth back off a pace or two. 

"Um, I thought . . . just a mugger . . ." 

I snorted. "Think, boy. A mugger doesn't attack one- on-two, especially not when one of his opponents is armed. Nor does he use a poisoned knife." The green glint along the edge of the blade showed clearly in the harsh light of my spell. "This man was trying to kill me. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to tell why." My search of his pockets had produced three one-silver coins (one of them bent), and a bit of lint, nothing else. "Unless you recognize him." 

"I . . . I don't think . . . _ulp_ . . ." The boy staggered a few paces away and was thoroughly sick. I sighed and left off with my search—there wasn't anywhere left to look unless I wanted to shred the dead man's clothes, anyway. 

"This is the first time you've seen a dead body this close up, isn't it?" I asked softly. "I apologize. I didn't think." Hopefully that would be good enough—it had been more than a millennium since I had last had to reassure anyone. 

"I'm sorry, Master." Meloth wiped his mouth and straightened up. "I'm all right now." 

"Don't waste your time trying to impress me, boy." It was remarkable, I mused, how much our relationship had changed in the few days since we had left Pentagulia—from total hostility on his part, to something approaching hero worship. "I won't hold you to the contract your father and I made," I added. "If you feel you can't endure this sort of thing, it wouldn't be wise of you to remain my apprentice. Death has a habit of following me around." 

"I told you, I'm all right." That was spoken with a touch of the old sullenness. 

"Very well. I would suggest that you don't tell your parents about this—it would only make them worry needlessly." 

The boy nodded. I gestured for him to continue on forward, and snuffed my magelight. There was silence until we left that particular alley, but then . . . 

"Master Galin, do you have any idea why . . ." A hard swallow. "No, I shouldn't even ask that—an apprentice is supposed to keep his master's secrets, isn't he? But . . . is there any way I can help?" 

"Not directly, but perhaps you can answer a question for me," I said. "Do you know of anyone on the island who actually _witnessed_ the massacre in Vane, or even the one in Meribia?" 

Another swallow. "I think . . . Cathlin's aunt was married to a mage, and lived in Vane with him. I don't know how she escaped what happened—she doesn't like to talk about it- -but she's in Burg now." 

"Burg." I sighed. "Then I regret that your stay at home is going to be rather brief, boy. We leave in the morning." 

"Yes, sir." 

We were near the edge of town, the street we had been following having become a pathway between scattered houses, when Meloth at last turned off and started climbing the front steps of one dwelling. 

"I'm home," he called through the open door. 

"Meloth." A woman's voice. I could see her over his shoulder, silhouetted against the light from inside the house. "We weren't sure whether you'd be coming tonight. And you must be Master Galin—you aren't quite what I expected." 

"I wasn't about to let him go to an inn for the night when we have all that extra space," Meloth said. 

"And so you shouldn't. Come inside, both of you—we were just about to have supper." 

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been invited into a family home for a meal—it might even have been in Burg, with Dyne. I probably looked just as out-of-place as I felt, sitting there armed and armoured and resisting Meloth's mother's attempts to draw me into conversation. Her husband the captain knew better—he just watched me. Meloth himself, Althena bless him, took it upon himself to talk about the sea voyage from his point of view, which deflected his inquisitive parent somewhat. 

Later, it was Meloth who showed me up to what had been his older brother's room, offered his good-nights with an unexpected shallow bow, and then left me blessedly alone to secure the door and the shutters on the window with lock spells, shuck off my armour, and lie down. 

However, the walls and doors in that house weren't all that thick, and once I wasn't moving around anymore, I could hear the sound of a conversation filtering up from below. 

" . . . looks like a hero, or at least a successful adventurer—not the vagabond you led me to expect," Meloth's mother was saying. "Not much like a mage, either, though." 

"We have four cold-lanterns to prove that he _is_ a mage, so I'm not likely to doubt him on that point," the captain replied. 

Meloth muttered something ending in, "down on his luck," then added, "Just so you know, we're only staying the night. He wants to go to Burg." 

"Burg!" his mother said. "Why?" 

"Even if I knew, I wouldn't be able to tell you without his permission. I _am_ his apprentice, after all, even if it's only for a few days." 

" . . . not sure this was a good idea," his father said. "Sending you running around the island with someone we really don't know anything about—not even where he's from, or if 'Galin' is his real name." 

"He's from Vane, I think," Meloth said. "Or at least he lived there long enough to know a bit about the city and the Guild. I've pieced that much together." 

I made a mental note to be more careful of what I said about Vane and the Guild. There was no real harm in his knowing that I'd once lived in that city, but I didn't want anyone to figure out just how long ago. 

"Still, maybe . . . break your apprenticeship . . . only supposed to be temporary, anyway . . ." For such a big man, I reflected, the captain certainly did mumble a lot. 

"Dear, he may be our baby, but he's still old enough to make decisions for himself. What do you want to do, Mel?" The nickname made me start a bit, even though it was an obvious abbreviation. Still, two beastmen more unlike than my temporary apprentice and Hell Mel, hero and pirate, were impossible to imagine. 

"I think . . ." Meloth began, then stopped. "No, I _know_. I'm going with him to Burg. There isn't much risk—Master Galin is a combat mage, so monsters aren't likely to bother us much . . . and anyway, the monsters around here are pretty pathetic." 

"Mel . . ." I don't know if the captain was mumbling again, or just at a loss for words. 

"Dad, don't you see? This is my chance, and I may never get another one." 

"If only your uncle were still alive . . ." His mother spoke the words as though they hurt her. 

"Even if Uncle Bertan were standing right here in front of me and offering to teach me, I'd still want to study with Master Galin." 

"You . . . but _why_?" 

I could almost see Meloth's sullen head-motion. "Well, once when old Cezen was still around, I asked him what the difference was between an apprentice, an ordinary mage like him, and a master. He sort of laughed and told me that a mage was just an apprentice whose spells don't normally misfire, but then he got all serious and said that a real master was different. A master mage can invoke even a complicated spell with just a thought and a keyword, instead of having to chant and concentrate. And the only time I've ever noticed Master Galin using a full chant is when he's trying to teach it to me." 

There was a moment's silence. 

"He's the real thing, and more than that, he's actually a pretty good teacher—I've learned a lot from him. I won't say he's easy to get along with, but so far, it's been worth the effort. So I'm going to Burg. I haven't decided whether I'm going to ask to go with him to the continent yet—maybe if he stops calling me 'boy' all the time. But for now, I'm going to bed, 'cause he's probably going to want to get an early start." 

I heard shuffling sounds, a door closing, someone climbing the stairs, then another door. I sighed and was considering actually letting myself drift off to sleep when I heard the captain saying, "I expected you to argue more." 

"I think that I would have, if Mel hadn't brought him home to meet me." 

The captain mumbled something incomprehensible. 

"About some things, you're as thick as a brick," his wife said affectionately. "You probably didn't notice, but Master Galin is a very lonely man. I think having Mel with him will be good for him . . . and besides, how much trouble can they get into between here and Burg?" 

". . . too nice . . ." 

Somehow, I managed to keep the laugh from escaping. _My dear lady, you have no idea what kind of trouble I can get into just standing still._ Especially when unknown parties were sending assassins after me for reasons I didn't entirely understand. I hadn't even _implied_ to anyone that I was trying to investigate the slaughter of beastmen in Vane until I'd spoken to Meloth after the attack, so it couldn't have been that. 

Could it be something as simple as someone not wanting mages here on this island? But that again led to the frustrating question of _why_. Not knowing enough to assign motives to my opponent was going to drive me insane in fairly short order—I needed some data to chew on, and soon. 

I tried to settle myself in for sleep, but although I'd forcefully put my major worries out of my mind, one other question kept intruding. 

_Am I lonely?_

Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that I had always been lonely. That brief, shining interval when Dyne, Mel, Lemia, and I had all been comrades had been . . . more of an aberration than anything else. Since then . . . well, uniquities don't often have friends. The pixies were the only creatures that hadn't cared what I was. After I finished my business in Vane, I was going to have to go and see if there was anything left of my garden. It was, perhaps, the only worthwhile thing I had ever created.


	4. Chapter 4

Meloth grinned broadly as his target went up in smoke. "Got him!" 

"So you have," I said, wiping goblin blood off my sword. "Well done," I added, because it was. This was only the second time the young beastman had cast the fireball spell, not to mention the first time he had cast any spell at all in battle, and he had performed it flawlessly. 

"Thank—Master! Behind you!" 

A keyword and a flick of my fingers sent the approaching goblin spinning into the trees at the apex of a tornado. 

"Eight of them," I said, counting corpses—and checking the underbrush for eyes, just in case. "They've started travelling in bigger packs since last I came this way . . . although, granted, that was a very long time ago, and this forest has always had a bad name." Granted, it was also a bit of a silly name—I'd laughed the first time Dyne had mentioned "the Weird Woods" in my hearing, because I'd thought he was making some kind of joke. 

"Do we have much farther to go?" Meloth asked. 

"The mist seems to be thinning up ahead, and Burg isn't all that far from the edge of the forest . . . unless the treeline has moved substantially," I added belatedly. "If you're hoping for a rest, you'll have to wait until we're out from under the trees. There are too many possibilities for an ambush in here." 

"All right." 

I snorted. "I wasn't precisely asking for your agreement, boy—just explaining myself as an alternative to throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you the last hundred yards or so." 

"Master, with all due respect, I doubt you could." 

"I'm stronger than I look—but I have no intention of conducting the experiment." I slammed my sword back into its scabbard and began walking again. 

I had been right—we were quite close to the edge of the trees. We emerged from the forest, climbed to the crest of a hill . . . and there was Burg. 

"It doesn't look like much," Meloth said, perching himself on a rock. 

"It's always been rather unprepossessing, for a town that managed to produce two Dragonmasters," I observed. 

"Two Dragonmasters . . . I didn't know that." 

"Alex, the last true Dragonmaster, and his predecessor, Dragonmaster Dyne, were both born and raised here. There used to be a monument, on the hill beyond the town . . . I wonder if it's still there." 

"I thought Ghaleon was the last Dragonmaster." 

I turned away from the rock, so that he wouldn't be able to see my face. "Ghaleon . . . was another case entirely. A true Dragonmaster is someone who passes the tests set by Althena's four dragons to become the goddess's guardian. Alex was the last Dragonmaster to have a goddess to serve. After that, the title became an empty sham. Most of the subsequent 'Dragonmasters' never even bothered taking the dragons' tests— Ghaleon included. And even had he taken them, and passed, the goddess would never have accepted him as her guardian. They had too much of a history." Absently, my hand brushed along my left cheekbone, and I was almost surprised to feel only flesh under my fingers. 

"You actually care about this stuff, don't you? The only reason I remember any of it at all is that my history teacher is a real demon." 

"You should at least feign an interest in the history of magic, boy. Ghaleon was one of the most powerful mages Lunar has ever seen. Better that you learn from his mistakes than repeat them yourself." I scrubbed the heel of my hand across my eyes, and sighed. _Remember who you are right now, 'Galin'._ "Are you rested enough yet?" 

"Rested enough to want to get to somewhere that I can sit on an actual chair, instead of having a rock biting into my legs," Meloth said. "Let's go." 

Climbing down the hill gave me the sensation of travelling back in time. In a continental town where wood was the primary building material, changes in architectural styles and shifts in the locations of buildings over the centuries would have rendered the place unrecognizable long since, but Burg was different—or rather, it was just the same as I remembered it. Standing by the statue of Althena in the middle of the village, I almost expected Dyne to appear from behind the store, grinning in that irrepressible way of his. 

I sighed and turned to my temporary apprentice. "Do you know where your friend's aunt lives?" 

"Somewhere near the entrance to the spring, I think." 

"This way, then." 

It could, I decided, be any one of three houses. Meloth seemed to think much the same, because he stood there biting his lower lip, indecision clear on his face. Then he squared his shoulders and strode over to where a middle-aged beastwoman was hanging laundry outside one of those houses. 

"Excuse me? Ma'am? We're looking for a woman named Caithra . . ." 

"And you've found her," the woman said, not even bothering to turn away from her washing. "How can I help you, lad?" 

"I'd like to ask you some questions, if I may," I said, and something in my voice finally attracted her attention enough to make her turn around. Upon seeing me, she immediately went pale. 

"Ma'am? Are you all right?" 

Meloth's question seemed to snap her out of a trance, and colour flooded back into her face. "I'm fine, lad—it's just that your . . . companion . . . reminds me of a portrait I once saw of . . . well, it doesn't matter anyway." 

There was still a portrait of me in Vane? That was a bit of a surprise—I would have thought that Lemia and her daughter would have expunged all record of Magic Guild Premier Ghaleon, and I'd never had much to do with the city when I'd been playing Dragonmaster for Zophar. Still, as Caithra had said, it wasn't important. 

"I believe you used to live in Vane," I said evenly. Caithra winced. 

"If that's what you want to talk about, I'd prefer not to do it in the sight of Althena and everyone. Would you please come inside?" 

I let her bustle around inside the modest house and make tea, hoping that it would comfort her and make her more likely to speak. After a few minutes, she ran out of things to fidget with, and came over to sit with us. 

"My lord, there can be only one thing about my life in Vane that you could possibly be interested in asking me about, and that is . . . how it ended. In the interest of shortening this ordeal, I'll tell you what I saw, although I doubt you'll find it very useful." 

Meloth's eyebrows rose when I didn't deny the title the beastwoman gave me, winced when she used the word "ordeal", and began to protest as soon as she had finished speaking. "Ma'am, you don't have to—" 

Caithra shook her head. "Lad, it will make matters simpler for everyone if I cooperate. I think . . . this may be why I was spared." 

"Master Galin . . ." 

"This isn't the time, boy. Keep silent, or leave." My eyes never left our hostess, who took a deep breath and began to speak again. 

"I don't think I'd still be here if my husband had been home that night. He was at an after-supper meeting at the Guild when everything fell apart. I was tucking our son into bed when I heard the most horrible noise—I figured out later that that must have been when they tore the door off its hinges." 

"They?" I asked softly. 

She shuddered. "I'll get to that. I wasn't sure whether I should try to find out what was going on, or lock myself in the room with my child, so I was standing beside his bed, dithering, when the door opened. I recognized the person on the other side instantly—he'd been a colleague of my husband's." She took a deep breath. "He'd also died three weeks earlier, and he wasn't really alive then, either. His skin was grey, his eyes were gone, and there were worms . . ." She shuddered again, and I heard Meloth swallow, hard. "I could smell the rot from where I was standing—it made me want to throw up. 

"I tried to force the door shut again—tried to get between him and my son . . . He just threw me aside as though I'd been a straw dummy. I hit the wall hard, and mostly head and chest first. It dazed me and knocked the wind out of me, but I never quite lost consciousness. I had to lie there and watch that dead man tear my little boy to pieces. It wasn't a very big room, and the blood got spattered all over the walls . . . all over me . . . 

"I think he must have thought I was dead, because he looked me over for a moment, then shuffled back out the door. It wasn't until hours later that I was able to bring myself up out of my daze, and by that time it was all over—I was the only living beastman anywhere in Vane. My husband had been killed on his way home. There was no sign of the attackers, although it was clear from the scorch marks on the ground that he must have tried to defend himself. In fact, there was no sign of the walking dead man, or of anyone else who might have been responsible for the mess, anywhere in Vane, and when I tried to tell people my story, I was dismissed as hysterical. I couldn't stay there after that—I wanted to get as far as possible from the Magic City, and Burg seemed like as good a place as any." She fell silent, staring into her tea. 

"You speak of 'they'," I said, "and yet you, personally, only saw one of these . . . walking corpses?" 

She nodded. "They found footprints of different sizes in the blood in some of the houses, though." 

"Hrmph. I take it there was no sign of any graves being disturbed." 

"That was the other thing—the graveyard where that man had been buried had been buried itself, in a landslide a couple of days earlier, so there was no way to check." 

"One more thing," I said, formulating the question carefully. "Do you have any idea—any at all, even if it's only a guess—who might have been responsible for what happened?" 

"No," Caithra said, her voice so soft that I had to strain to hear it. 

"Very well. I apologize for distressing you." I rose to my feet, leaving my own tea untouched. Meloth gathered himself to stand as well, but I shook my head and gestured him back down. "I need to think. I'll be up by Dyne's Monument. Don't disturb me unless it's important." 

Ironically, as I discovered, that little spot on the hill behind the town was the one place that _had_ visibly changed in my absence. When I reached the top, Dyne's Monument was still there on my right, battered and weathered to the point that the engraved letters were approaching illegibility, but still solidly present. On the other side, though, there was another low hump of stone that hadn't been there before. Tracing the shallow indentations on its less-weathered side, I was able to distinguish a name: ALEX. There was another inscription, much defaced by time: L—A. 

I smiled and shook my head. "Together to the last—of course," I murmured. "Tell me, goddess, at the end . . . did you still think you'd made the right choice?" 

Only the wind was there to answer. I went over and sat down with my back to the other stone, the one erected in the honour of my friend. 

"You probably didn't have any regrets, either," I said out loud to his ghost. "You were always too straightforward for such things—able to make your choices and abide by them. Not like me. I wonder, is that why I'm the one who keeps getting called back to Lunar? Because I'm still embarrassed by my own stupidity and arrogance? You would think that playing my little game with Zophar would have been enough to make up for anything I might have done wrong that first time . . . It's difficult to believe that I was ever that young and that stupid . . . that blind. Sometimes, I feel like I've lived through every one of the thousand years between Alex's sword plunging into my guts and waking up on the roof of the Goddess Tower, with Zophar's voice snarling at me out of the air—and however many years lie between the roof of the Magic Guild and the ruins of Pentagulia, for that matter." 

I laughed. "It's awkward, you know—if I convince myself that you would never have been stupid enough to end up here, I also can't ask myself what you would do if you were in my position. Not and expect to get any kind of a useful answer, anyway. Oh, in broad terms, maybe. I know you believed in humanity—in the value and the power of the human spirit. You would have wanted to help these people. But I have no idea how, specifically, to deal with a necromancer . . . It's remarkable that we even have a word for such a person. It's a very old word, mind you—it may even have come with humanity from the Blue Star. 

"It doesn't exactly help my peace of mind that the only being I've ever encountered who was capable of raising the dead was Zophar . . . although recently-dead corpses that clearly _are_ still dead don't really fit with his methods as I know them. Perhaps someone else is practicing a corrupt form of his magic . . . or perhaps that poor beastwoman is merely delusional. It does seem very odd—a mass slaughter, then twenty years without any kind of follow-up. Perhaps what happened was an accident, or the instigator was slaughtered along with his victims . . . but I'm afraid it may turn out to be the kind of long- laid, subtle plan I used to specialize in myself. 

"If I'm wrong, if I'm lucky . . . I suppose I'll retire to my garden, if it's still there, and spend the rest of my life in quiet seclusion until I die of old age, however long that turns out to take. No humans, no dragons . . . no second-guessing the gods. There are worse fates. But if I'm right . . ." 

I suppressed the sudden impulse to whine, to ask a dead goddess if I hadn't already shed enough blood and tears for my world. Somebody needed to act before things got any worse and Lunar's two most numerous intelligent races turned on each other. Things seemed balanced at the moment, more or less, but I had a feeling it was a delicate equilibrium, the kind that could be upset by a raindrop landing on one side of the scale. And as for hoping that someone else would take care of the problem . . . well, it had been twenty years. If someone had intended to act, they'd have done so by now. 

"I need to get to Vane," I told the ghosts. "I just wish I knew how to go about it."


	5. Chapter 5

A few days later, I was sitting in the bow of another ship as it nosed into Azado's harbour, and laughing at myself for having forgotten one of the foremost rules of commerce: if people on one side of a border want a good produced by people on the other side, someone will find a way to move that good across, no matter the obstacles. And there weren't really all that many obstacles to trade between Caldor Isle and the mainland— not for a Saith-based, human-crewed ship, anyway. Beastmen weren't even technically forbidden to enter the city . . . yet. 

"Aah!" 

I grabbed the back of Meloth's robe and hauled him back before he could pitch head-first over the ship's rail. The boy had insisted on coming with me, despite my attempts to dissuade him . . . and, to my surprise, his parents had approved, leaving me no choice but to take him, since, while I didn't want to be responsible for him, I wanted even less to be responsible for him getting into trouble by deciding to follow me alone and unsupervised. 

"Pay a little more attention to where you are, and a little less to the view," I said. "And keep your hood up." He'd pushed it down before going to the rail, probably to get a better view. 

"Yes, Master. It's just that I've never seen such a big city before, and . . ." 

"I'm hardly surprised that a life of trading in the outer islands didn't prepare you for a visit to one of Lunar's largest settlements," I said. "Nevertheless, I suggest you remember that beastmen are distinctly unwelcome here." The ship's crew hadn't been very forthcoming with details, but my acute hearing had allowed me to listen in on some of their supposedly private conversations, and a few of the anecdotes had been enough to chill even my blood. "You need to stay hidden and unobtrusive, for both our sakes. If I have to dispel a lynch mob, a lot of people are going to end up getting killed." 

The boy swallowed. "Yes, Master Galin," he repeated in a more subdued tone of voice. 

"Cheer up, boy. We won't be in the city for long." And any other town we needed to stop at along the way, I could enter alone. Fortunately, I'd thought to purchase supplies in Saith—if Meloth didn't hold me back too much, we might make it all the way to our destination without having to make contact with anyone. 

We waited through the rituals of tying-up and customs inspection, then disembarked without fanfare. 

"We have to go through part of the town to reach the gates," I warned Meloth. "Stay close to me, and keep your hood up and your head down." 

"Yes, Master." My apprentice readjusted the straps of his pack, and I wondered if he realized that I'd laden him down with all our heaviest goods to keep him from wanting to do any exploring on his own. He probably thought I was just making use of my privileges as his master again. 

I set a crisp pace, fast enough to discourage questioners but not fast enough to make it look like we were running away. Even so, I noted that we were getting a number of lingering stares. Hopefully, they were due to my distinctive appearance rather than curiosity about Meloth. 

"Damnit! Thief! Stop thief!" 

My own curse blended into the keyword of a paralysis spell as I tried to push Meloth out of the way. Unfortunately, the fool boy tripped over his own feet and was only saved from falling over by a wild grab at the edge of a market stall. In the process, his hood fell back . . . and suddenly there was a widening empty space around the two of us . . . and the paralyzed thief, who gave me an impotent glare from his awkward position on the ground. 

Someone was pushing through the fringe of gawkers. "You got him! Gee, thanks!" 

All I could do was stare. She couldn't be . . . 

_And she isn't,_ I was able to tell myself firmly after a moment. _Blue hair or no, she bears absolutely no resemblance to Lucia or . . . Luna._ For one thing, this woman, while young, was far older than either of those girls had been the last time I had seen them—probably in her mid-twenties. She was also far too tall, lacking only perhaps an inch of my height, and too strong-featured for anyone ever to call her pretty. And certainly neither Lucia nor Luna would ever have been caught dead dressed in well-worn leather armour, with shortswords on each hip, and carrying a heavy travelling pack on her back . . . and a small blonde girl of perhaps four years of age in her arms. 

"You're a lifesaver," she added as she pried a pouch out of the paralyzed thief's hand, the little girl standing beside her and holding on to her belt. "I was on my way out of town, and was just about to step through the gate when this bastard made off with my cash. I hope he stays this way for life," she added, kicking the unfortunate man in the ribs. 

"I'm afraid the spell will wear off in a few minutes," I said. "But by that time, he should be the city watch's problem, not ours. If you'll excuse us . . ." 

Meloth had his hood back up by this point, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and began to steer him toward the far side of the market square, ignoring his mumbled apology—it had been as much my fault as his, not realizing that his pack would probably have him off-balance. 

I stopped in front of the wall of people hemming us in, and raked them with a glare. None of them would meet my eyes. I directed the force of my attention at one slightly pudgy middle-aged man in particular. 

"You can move yourself, or I can move you," I said in a reasonable tone of voice, and it was like lifting the center of a flexible pan full of water a little higher than the sides—people flowed out of the way, until we had a passage through the three- man-deep human wall. 

"You're _good_ ," the blue-haired woman observed from behind me. A quick glance back showed that she had picked up her little blonde passenger again. "I thought we were going to be stuck here until the guardsmen showed up." 

"You make that sound like we want to keep that unregistered beastman here," came an anonymous voice from the crowd. "We want him out of the city—and you too, bitch, if you think it's okay to go gentle on that kind of murdering filth." 

" _What?_ " 

I reached back, grabbed _her_ by the shoulder as well, and, ignoring her protests, strode through the gap in the human wall, pushing Meloth ahead of me and towing the nameless woman. Once we were on the other side, I let her go, but continued on toward the gate without slackening my pace. She caught up with us by half-running a couple of steps, trying to hold the little girl with one arm while rubbing her shoulder with the opposite hand. 

"Hey! What the hell did you think you were doing back there?" 

"Stopping a riot before it had a chance to start," I said grimly. "If that heckler had persisted, the mood of the crowd might have turned ugly—fast." 

"Well, you're certainly paranoid—and has anyone ever told you that you have a grip like a vise? I think you bruised me right through my armour. I admit, there was a bit of a mess here twenty years ago—humans and beastmen fighting over who was responsible for . . . but anyway, I don't think—" 

"Clearly," I muttered. 

"Hey, I heard that!" 

"You were meant to." We were almost at the gate. "Are you intending to follow us all the way to Vane?" I didn't want—or need—another complication in my life just now. 

"Vane, huh? Well, I was going to stop off there on the way to Taben's Peak anyway, just to get a bath and a hot meal and spend the night in a real bed, so I guess I _will_ be with you all the way there." 

"Then I hope you can pull your own weight _and_ look after that child yourself, because I already have one . . . inexperienced traveller . . . to worry about." Meloth's shoulder stiffened under my hand when I said that, but he didn't argue. 

"I'll have you know I'm actually pretty good with these." She slapped the hilt of one of her swords. "By the way, I'm Azure, and this is Irina, my niece." Wasn't there any way I could chase this woman away? 

"I'm Meloth Arimal, from Port Saith on Caldor Island," my apprentice responded when it became clear I wasn't going to. "And this is my teacher, Master Galin." 

"Pleased to meet you both." 

The gate guards brought their spears down to block our passage, and I reached for my sword, biting back an acidic remark and reminding myself that I wasn't currently a hero, a Dragonmaster, the Magic Emperor, or even merely the Premier of Vane's Magic Guild—just a wandering mage, no matter my skills or power . . . or history. 

"Sorry, sir, but we need to have your friend push back his hood—there's a murderer on the loose, and we're afraid he might try to flee the city . . ." 

Meloth squeaked and immediately did as he was told, revealing his face—and his ears and horn. 

"A beastman!" That was the younger guard, who shifted his grip on his spear. "Where's your registration tag?" 

"Regi—what?" 

"All beastmen in Azado have to be registered with our headquarters—it's the law," the younger guard said piously. "After all, we can't have a repetition of what happened twenty years ago. Last night was bad enough—" 

"The registration laws only apply to _resident_ beastmen, Jorg," his grey-haired companion corrected. "If I'm not mistaken, these people are transients. You haven't been in the city overnight, have you?" 

"We just got off ship not twenty minutes ago," I said. "The _Swift_ , out of Port Saith. You can send someone down to the harbour to check with her captain, if you wish." 

"I don't think that will be necessary, sir . . . but if you're returning this way with your young friend, please by sure to stop by our headquarters if you want to remain in the city overnight." 

The spears were lifted, and we were permitted to pass through the gate. Once we were outside, to my surprise, it was Azure who charged ahead, despite her burden. She didn't try to sustain her swift walk for long, however—the moment we crested the first hill beyond the city, she stopped and put the little girl down. 

"It's safe now, I think, sweetheart," she said, kneeling down so that her face was, if not level with the child's, at least not so far above her, either. "I'm sorry I had to do this, but if you'd made a fuss in front of the guards . . ." My eyes narrowed as she added to that a brief chant that I recognized as an elementary spell cancellation. 

The little girl's face flickered and . . . changed, subtly. Her ears became pointed, slanted markings appeared on her face, and a little protrusion with just the tip of an ivory horn showing through appeared in the center of her forehead. Her expression, which had been oddly blank before, changed too, and she sat down in the middle of the dusty trail and began to cry. 

"Your . . . niece," I said to Azure as she gathered the beastchild into her arms and tried to comfort her, my tone making it clear that I didn't believe that for a minute. "I thought you were oddly persistent in clinging to us. You were using us to distract the guards, weren't you?" 

"Like I said, you're good." 

I shook my head angrily. "I should have known the moment you said you were going to Taben's Peak. There's only one possible kind of business you could have there with a child in tow. I assume that she's an orphan, and you had a good reason for smuggling her out of the city." 

"Yeah, I had a good reason for sneaking her out of Azado—they were going to kill her!" 

I frowned. "A child of that age?" 

"I take it you don't know much about current Azadan law. Last night, her father got into a fight with a bunch of guards. He was killed, but not before he did a real number on one of the guards, who died early this morning. Beastmen are only allowed to live in Azado on sufferance, these days, hence all that 'registration' crap the guard at the gate was spouting. If one of them kills a human, no matter what the provocation, they refuse to _suffer_ him any longer—not only is he executed, but any kids he might have had are too, to make sure that whatever 'hereditary factor' caused his 'aggression' doesn't spread through the population. When I told her aunt about the Dragon Kids, she just about begged me to take Irina to them." 

I glanced back at the city. "Mel de Alkirk must be spinning in his grave." 

"I wouldn't be at all surprised," Azure said grimly. 

"Mel . . . who?" Meloth asked. 

"History again," I said. "Mel de Alkirk was a beastman—a reformed pirate, in fact—who ruled Meribia a number of centuries ago. He was just about singlehandedly responsible for taking the state of relations between beastmen and humans from a sort of armed truce to genuine cooperation, although he'd never have admitted it." 

"Eighteen hundred years, to be exact," Azure said. A little shock ran through me—I now had at least a rough figure for the amount of time I'd missed: eight hundred years. 

The boy groaned. "Don't tell me you _both_ have a thing for ancient history . . ." 

A particularly loud wail from the little girl attracted the attention of all of us. 

"She won't stop crying," Azure said worriedly. "I don't know much about kids—is this normal?" 

"Well, given the kind of morning she's probably had, I wouldn't say it was _ab_ normal," Meloth said, dropping his heavy pack unceremoniously on the ground. "Give her here," he said, crouching down and opening his arms wide. Azure deposited Irina in front of him, and Meloth laid his hands gently on her shoulders. "Now, why don't you tell Uncle Mel what's wrong, hmm?" 

"Want _Daddy_!" the little girl said. 

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, Daddy isn't here. He asked Auntie Azure to take you to Taben's Peak for him." 

"Taben . . ." Irina blinked. 

"That's where Daddy will come to look for you. If you aren't there, he won't be able to find you. You don't want that, do you?" 

She shook her head. 

"And Taben's Peak is a great place," Azure said encouragingly. "Lots of other kids for you to play with. You'll have fun." 

"Fun . . ." Irina seemed to think about that for a while. " . . . Okay. Go to Taben. Uncle Mel carry me?" 

"Um . . ." The boy glanced at me. I nodded. "Sure, sweetheart." 

"You're pretty good with kids, for someone who can't possibly have any of his own," Azure said. 

Meloth gave her a lopsided smile as he gathered up Irina. "I'm the youngest of four, and my older sisters are both married. I have two nieces and a nephew about this age, and I end up babysitting a lot. And . . . I think Irina here may be happier with another beastman around." 

"Hmph. I suppose we're going to have to go all the way to Taben's Peak with you now," I said to Azure, adding, "Take off your pack. We're going to have to split the boy's load between the two of us, if he's going to carry her." 

The blue-haired woman smiled as she disentangled herself from the requested item and dropped it on the ground between us. "Careful, Master Galin—you might actually start to make me think you have a heart underneath that mass of ice and six-inch steel spikes you show to the world." 

"I don't approve of injustice," I said flatly as I doffed my own pack, "and this child appears to have been on the receiving end of a lot of it. She needs—she _deserves_ —to be protected." Small children, like pixies, were among nature's innocents . . . I sighed and started to empty all three packs out on the grass. Tent . . . blankets . . . rope . . . food . . . a cookpot or two . . . I frowned. There was less duplication between Azure's equipment and ours than I had expected—it looked almost as though she had planned only for one person. Well, perhaps she hadn't had time to go shopping after finding herself saddled with the child . . . Nevertheless, I filed the discrepancy away in my mind as I worked on dividing everything up into two piles of roughly equal weight and bulk. 

"I can see that travelling with you is going to be a pleasure," Azure said. 

I chuckled darkly. "Likewise." 

"What were you going to do in Vane, anyway?" 

"Avail myself of the Library . . . and, the Guild permitting, expose my apprentice to other teachers and styles of magic." It was a good excuse, anyway. "Although I've dabbled in any number of branches of magic, when all's said and done, I'm primarily a combat mage, and I'm not sure that Meloth is suited to that particular course of study, however much he may enjoy blowing up goblins." 

Azure smiled. "Well, from what I understand, he _is_ at about that age." 

I raised my eyebrows. "That . . . age." 

"When boys have a fascination with blowing things up or burning them down," she explained. "Or so my friend Nall tells me." So Nall was still the White Dragon. I wondered if she knew what her "friend" was, or if he still maintained his human facade. "Didn't you ever go through that stage yourself?" 

"Not that I can recall." I began repacking everything, and Azure crouched down to help me. 

"You must have been a singularly humourless little boy," she said. 

I sighed in exasperation. "By the time I was Meloth's age, I was already a full mage and well on my way to being a master. I didn't have time for such foolishness—and the damage I could have done if I had doesn't bear thinking about." 

"So you were a child prodigy. I'll bet you didn't have many friends." 

"I scarcely remember," I said. "It was a long time ago." 

"Really? You don't look that old—although I admit that I don't know how long . . . people of your race . . . live, so I could be wrong." 

"Why is everyone on Lunar so interested in my ancestry?" I asked my pack, rhetorically. "As it happens, I don't know exactly what I am either—I was a foundling. And right now, I feel old enough to have been Mel de Alkirk's contemporary." Tallying up the years I had lived, as opposed to the years since my presumed birth, yielded an unhelpful fifty-six- -unhelpful because I didn't know whether I had aged while I'd been under Zophar's control. If I hadn't, you could knock eight years off of that. Either way, I wasn't losing physical condition the way a human of my age would have been—more unhelpful data. 

I stood and re-shouldered my load—heavier now, obviously, but no more than I'd carried many years ago as a young adventurer. 

"Shall we?" I asked, waving one hand vaguely in the direction of Vane, and Taben's Peak beyond it. 

Meloth fell in beside me, carrying the little girl piggyback. "Master, I don't suppose . . ." 

I sighed. "What is it?" 

"That spell for seeing what a person's magical affinity is—would you teach it to me?" 

"Oh, that." I ran through both parts—the gesture, and the chant I didn't need—slowly and carefully, several times. "Intending to test our new friends?" 

"No, no, I was just curious. Hmm." He cast at himself, producing an orange symbol that was now brighter than it had been when we'd first met, and no longer prone to unpredictable flares—evidence that he was making progress. 

Irina giggled and reached for the orange light. "Pretty!" 

The boy grinned. "I suppose it is. Want to see what kind of light you make?" 

"Mm-hm!" 

For someone who'd had no intention of testing Azure and the girl, I reflected as Meloth traced the symbol over the child's hand and murmured the chant, my apprentice was certainly doing a good job of it. 

Irina produced a sparking, flaring silver-green symbol. Meloth touched it tentatively. 

"Master, that means she has a wind affinity, doesn't it?" 

I nodded. "From the look of it, she'll be a strong mage, if that's the path she chooses in life," I added—the flares were quite bright. 

"So I should ask Nall to send her to Vane when she's old enough," Azure said from where she was walking a little behind the rest of us. 

"If that's what she wants to do," I said. "There are plenty of potentially powerful mages who never choose to train their abilities." 

Perhaps I'd be happier now if that was what I'd chosen as well. 

"And others who never have the opportunity," said Azure, and the expression on her face suggested to me that she was thinking of someone specific. Herself? No, I decided. Another. Someone for whom she felt . . . some affection. A beastman, perhaps, who didn't dare approach Vane for fear of what had happened to his fellows twenty years ago. 

I shook my head. _And when did I start spinning fancies from the air? This woman's business is her own. I only need to help her accomplish it as quickly as possible so that I may be rid of her._

There were two or three hills between us and the city now—we'd been making progress while we'd been talking. We were wending our way along a dry ravine when I stopped and held up my hand. 

"Quiet. I hear something." 

Meloth came to a stop, ears twitching. "There's nothing," he reported after a moment. "Master, you must be imagining things." 

"Quiet!" I repeated, more sharply, knowing of old that my hearing was more acute than that of any human or beastman- -a disadvantage in a noisy environment, but useful out here in the hills. Yes, there it was: a soft clicking. I swore and drew my sword. 

Azure went for her weapons as well. "What is it?" 

"Giant ants, I think," I said. "I can't be sure, much less tell you how many or how close—the rocks make the sounds bounce around too much. But be ready." 

We continued on more quietly until Azure touched the back of my hand to get my attention, then pointed with her chin. Now that she'd directed my attention to it, I could see the first ant, standing in the shadow of a steep bank. 

"Stay between us," I ordered Meloth, who nodded grimly. 

There had to be twenty of them, I thought, detecting the faint sound of insectile feet scratching against rock from both sides of us, ahead, and even behind—unusually well-organized for a pack of monsters. There was a moment in which nothing seemed to move, and then they broke over us like a wave, but coming from all directions. I waded in with sword and spell, trying not to get too far from Meloth and leave him and the child defenseless except for Azure's uncertain skills and my apprentice's even less certain fire magic. 

After we'd whittled their numbers down a bit, the ants decided that discretion was the better part of valour and disappeared into three-foot-high holes in the side of a nearby hill, and I turned to check on Meloth. 

"Are you all right, boy?" 

"Not a scratch on either of us," my apprentice reported cheerily, then added, "But that was kind of messy, wasn't it? Worse that the goblins on Caldor Isle." 

I snorted agreement, scanning the mess of ant bits and greenish-yellow ichor spread around my feet. 

"That's what happens when you fight something with an open circulatory system," Azure said, sounding just as cheerful as the boy. Indeed, she was grinning in a way that called an answering smile from me, if a slightly sour one. Her leather armour was splashed with yellow-green, and she had almost as many carcasses arranged around her as I did. 

"Clean your weapons," I said, bending down to wipe my sword on a tuft of coarse grass. "We still have a long way to go today."


	6. Chapter 6

"It's tilted," Meloth said, staring at the city. 

"Only a little bit," Azure said. 

"Yes, but why?" 

"It crash-landed at a slight slant," I said dryly. 

"Master Galin, you aren't claiming that the stories about Vane having been a flying city are _true_ , are you?" my apprentice asked, giving me a reproachful look. 

I snorted. "You don't have to take my word for it, boy—there's plenty of evidence still around, if you know where to look. Under your feet, for instance." 

"What?" Meloth's sudden downward glance involved a violent movement that almost unseated his dozing passenger. "This is . . . some kind of magical diagram . . ." 

"It's a teleporter terminal," I explained. "Two thousand years ago, the only way to reach Vane was via teleportation up from the Transmission Spring. People who had already passed the entrance test arrived here when they used it." 

"Entrance test? No, don't tell me—I don't really want to know. So where do we go now?" 

"You and Azure are going to find us a place to stay," I said. "When you have, you'll find me in the Library." 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noted that Azure was mouthing something that looked like, _High-handed as always,_ and Meloth responding with a grin and a wink as they turned left and I continued on past them. 

The institution I sought was still in the same place—but then, the Great Library of Vane had occupied its present quarters since long before I'd been born. At some time during the past eight centuries, they'd finally seen fit to expand it, and a new wing of rawer, paler stone fanned off to one side . . . but the entrance was unchanged except for the colour of the paint on the door. 

The inside hadn't changed much either—well, all right, there were a few carpets that hadn't been there before, probably set up to protect worn flooring, but the main room was still crammed with bookshelves. I ghosted between them, reading titles, until I found the current location of the history section and began to pull books down and haul them to the nearest of the open tables. A few of the students who formed the majority of the library's population stared at me as I passed, but I ignored them. When I'd accumulated enough books, I sat down and began to read. 

"Master Galin?" 

It was, judging from the light that was slanting in through the windows, several hours later when Meloth's voice distracted me from what I was doing. I sighed and put the volume I'd been reading—a private journal that had been placed in the library upon the owner's death ten years ago, that thus far hadn't been very helpful regarding the massacre or the events leading up to it. 

"What is it, boy?" 

"I was exploring the town, and I found out something that I thought you should know." 

"Go on." I wasn't sure that I trusted his judgement, but then, he'd already interrupted me . . . 

"One of the masters here has been working on spells to raise the dead." 

I snorted and lifted my book again. "I think there's always been at least one of those in the city since the Magic Academy was founded." 

"Have any of the others been willing to give a demonstration of their results?" 

I snapped the journal shut. "Not that I can ever recall." 

"It's tomorrow night, at the Guild Headquarters." Which meant that access was going to be restricted to members of the Guild in good standing—something that I most definitely was not. "Um . . . He isn't likely to be trying this out on a _person_ , is he?" 

"More likely on a rat, if he has any sense," I said. "Do you know anything else about the master giving the demonstration?" 

"I figured you'd want to know that, so I asked. His name's Altus, and he's from Meribia. He's been a master for eighteen years, and just became Guild Premier, whatever that is, a year ago. Oh, and they say that he has some Vile Tribe blood." 

"The Premier is simply the Guild master mage with the highest level of developed magical power," I said absently. "Sometimes, that person is also the hereditary Guildmistress, but more often not. The positions have always been distinct." I stood and stretched, deciding in the process that I'd been hunched over my pile of books for far too long. "You've done well, boy." 

Meloth smiled. "Thank you, Master." 

"Well, look at the little beastman, all aglow at being praised by a hedge-mage," drawled a voice which I traced, a few seconds later, to an apprentice sitting at the opposite end of the table. 

"You take that back!" Meloth's voice was loud in the library's hush, and his hands were balled into fists. 

"Quiet, boy," I snapped. "Show some self-restraint. You're not a child anymore." 

"But, Master . . ." 

Was this a nuisance, or an Althena-sent opportunity? In any case, I saw a way in which I might turn it to my advantage. 

The other apprentice was sneering, but the expression wiped itself quickly from his face when I strode toward his end of the table. He bolted to his feet, knocking over his chair in the process. It still wasn't nearly enough to put our eyes on a level. 

"In my day, second-rank apprentices knew better than to insult the students of other mages," I said, not bothering to raise my voice. "Promotion beyond the first rank used to be limited to those demonstrating the maturity to be trusted with more powerful and dangerous magics. I find it sad that the Guild's standards have fallen to the extent you've just demonstrated. Now, let's see . . ." 

It had been a long time since I'd last used the humiliating little spell that called up the transcript of a Vane student, but I still remembered the keyword. The nameless apprentice went white as I spoke it—evidently he knew that that particular magic was only ever taught to masters of the Guild. 

"Tarret Sildoth. No official personal apprenticeship," I observed as I scanned the glowing letters that floated in midair between us. "What's this? Your scores in combat arts are abysmal—I would never have permitted you to pass the course. Personal notes . . . Hmph." There were almost none, except a brief notation from Guild Premier Altus that he found young Tarret's work "eminently satisfactory". That smacked of politics, which, to my mind, had no place in the Guild Academy. I hesitated only a moment before using my forefinger to scribble in a single sentence of my own: _Displays an attitude unbecoming to a mage._ I didn't bother to sign it with either my real or my assumed name, although using the real one was . . . tempting, if only for the confusion it would cause. But better, in this case, to just let Tarret have to explain the origin of the remark to his . . . patron. 

I dismissed the record with a snap of my fingers and turned to Meloth. "Come along, boy. It's past time that we got something to eat, and in any case, I seem to have reached the point of diminishing returns here." And I didn't want to be anywhere quite so flammable if it turned out that I hadn't attracted quite the kind of attention I was looking for—not with a volatile young fire talent in tow. 

The message that I'd been hoping for didn't arrive until breakfast the next morning, in the person of a third-rank Guild apprentice walking into the common room of the modest inn we were staying at, ignoring the way most of the people there were staring at him as he came to a stop beside our table. 

"Master Galin?" He had to be pretty sure he had the right person, of course, but unlike Tarret, this apprentice had manners. 

"Yes?" I said. 

"Guildmistress Milia Ausa would like to meet you, sir. If it's agreeable to you, she will be available at the third hour of the morning." 

So I'd been right—Tarret had complained about me to his patron the Premier, and he, in turn, had mentioned to the Guildmistress that there seemed to be an unauthorized mage using the transcript spell. Making myself Guild business was much quicker than trying to get an appointment in the normal way. 

I inclined my head to the messenger-apprentice. "That time is convenient for me, as well. You may inform her that I will see her then." 

"Thank you, sir." 

"You aren't really intending to go, are you?" Azure asked once the messenger had departed. "We'll lose at least half a day—" 

"You're perfectly welcome to go on ahead without me—that includes you, boy. I can catch up to you easily enough." Aside from all other considerations, teleporting along my line of sight was easy enough and could save hours of travel time in hilly country. 

Azure hesitated, then shrugged. "I suppose one day really won't make that much of a difference." 

An hour or so later, having concluded Meloth's morning lesson, I was climbing the last few steps up to the entrance to the Guild's headquarters. The building's condition had immeasurably improved over the past eight hundred years . . . then again, at the time of my last visit, it had been in such bad shape that most of the people entering and leaving had glanced furtively above them to check for falling roof tiles. I'd watched them doing so while I'd been waiting for Hiro to . . . well, no matter. 

Inside, the general layout hadn't changed, but it had clearly been redecorated several times. 

"Master Galin?" That was one of the guards flanking the entrance to the hall. "The Guildmistress is waiting for you in her office. It's—" 

I'd already turned to the right. The functions of the public ground-floor rooms had been almost perfectly constant since the Magic Guild's founding, and I doubt they'd have changed much in a mere eight centuries, so the office I was looking for would be the first door on my left. 

I knocked sharply. The knob turned, and the door opened, but there was no one within arm's reach of it on the other side—a spell I'd used myself from time to time, when I wanted to intimidate a non-mage. 

"Master Galin, I presume," said the woman behind the desk. She bore a startling resemblance to her ancestress Lemia, although she was clearly older than my onetime adventuring companion had been the last time I'd seen her—perhaps fifty. 

"Lady Milia." I offered her a shallow bow. 

"It's a pleasure to meet you. Please come in and sit down." 

I stepped through the door, then spoke the keyword to the other half of the spell she'd used and flicked my fingers over my shoulder to target it, drawing the portal shut. My host's face acknowledged the hit. I kept my own expression bland as I unbuckled my swordbelt and leaned my weapon against the side of the chair that she indicated. Only then did I sit down. 

"It's rare that the Guild has the opportunity to welcome back one of its own that's been so long away," she began. 

"You assume that I have any interest in being welcomed back—or indeed, that I was ever of the Guild at all," I said lazily. 

Milia Ausa snorted indelicately. "Oh, I don't think there's much doubt of that. That transcript spell is singularly useless to anyone not a member of the Magic Guild, so much so that I can't see why anyone educated outside our system would want to learn it, even if his master was able to teach it." 

"To perpetuate a fraud," I suggested. 

"Why bother? You're clearly a master mage in your own right—being of the Guild wouldn't gain you much in the way of extra privileges." 

"Except access to the Guild's secret research library." 

"And the fact that you even know we have one again proves that you were once one of us." The Guildmistress clasped her hands in front of her on her desk. "Let me be frank. I was, at first, a bit disturbed to discover that a mage that no living member of the Guild had ever heard of before knew a private Guild spell . . . but now that I've met you, it's clear that you have a lot of Vile Tribe blood, and I expect you share their lifespan. How many centuries has it been since you last sat where you are now?" 

"Too many," I murmured—which was the truth, or as much of it as I dared give her. "But there is one possibility that you still haven't explored: I might have been thrown out of the Guild." 

"Impossible," she said promptly. "No master has ever been ejected from the Guild—not even Ghaleon, the man who shot Vane down from the sky." 

"If only because, by the time the Guild had leisure to attend to such trifling matters again, he was already dead," I observed. In truth, I was surprised that Mia Ausa hadn't tried to erase my name from the Guild's histories. 

She shook her head. "Ghaleon, whatever his flaws, was a brilliant magical researcher. Hundreds of his documents are still on file both in the Great Library and in our private collection, and many of them still represent the most advanced exploration of certain branches of magic that has ever been performed. If the Guild had repudiated him, all those documents would have had to be destroyed—an incalculable loss. And in any case, he redeemed himself when he was brought back into the world. However, that's ancient history, and I am more interested in recent events. What brings you back to Vane, after such a very long time?" 

"Two things," I said. "Will you permit me to air the less serious of the two first?" 

"Go ahead." 

"Thank you." I crossed my legs and leaned back in my seat. "You may have heard that I have an apprentice. Unfortunately, I don't have the leisure, at the moment, to give him the training he deserves . . . and I doubt it will be safe for me to keep him with me much longer. I would appreciate it if you would enroll him in the Guild." 

"Your apprentice is a beastman," the Guildmistress said. "He may be no safer in Vane than he would be with you." 

I gave her a calm, level look. "Someone sent an assassin after me in Port Saith, and I don't doubt that something else of the sort will eventually happen again—indeed, I'm surprised that it hasn't already. Given that, I believe Meloth is better off taking his chances here." 

"Have you spoken to him about this?" 

"Not yet," I admitted. 

Milia half-smiled. "I suspected as much. You don't think he'll want to leave you, do you?" 

I sighed in exasperation. "I'm the only teacher the boy has ever had, and I suspect he may be subconsciously convinced that I am the source of all magic, or something along those lines— I've seen it happen before. He needs to learn differently. Perhaps then he won't insist on following me around." 

"You care for him more than you're willing to admit, I think." 

Suddenly, I couldn't meet her eyes. "Everyone keeps telling me that," I said, gazing down at her desk. "The truth is that I can't afford to care—about him or anyone. My life is too dangerous to permit me any emotional attachments." And when I even allowed myself to consider the concept of friendship, I felt an ache inside me, and knew it was the spot where Dyne had torn himself loose. He was the only person I'd ever really let past my defenses . . . and look how that had ended. 

"Hmmm. Well, as far as I'm concerned, being the apprentice of a Guild master mage, he's already one of ours, and can stay here if he wishes." 

I inclined my head. "My thanks." 

"And your other errand here?" 

After a moment's hesitation, I said, "Are you aware that there was a beastman survivor of the massacre here? A woman named Caithra?" 

"You've spoken to her, I take it?" 

"Yes. Might I ask why her testimony was disregarded at the time?" 

Milia closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. 

"You must understand," she said, "that those events took place while my mother was still Guildmistress. I wasn't even living in Vane—I wanted to test my magic under field conditions, so I'd chosen to travel. But my understanding is that she was dismissed as hysterical because the Guild executive of the time couldn't find any magical traces to substantiate what she was saying." 

"Such traces can be erased," I observed. "However, let me offer a link between this historical matter and the present day, in which you have said you are more interested. The Guild's current Premier is pursuing a line of research that might be capable of creating just what she described." 

The Guildmistress sucked in a deep breath, and her eyes narrowed. "Maybe it could, now that you mention it. However . . ." 

"However, he may also be perfectly innocent of anything except trying to complete one of the age-old quests of all mages," I said smoothly. "I'm not making any accusations, merely stating that I wish to investigate this research of his. Had I been aware of . . . recent history . . . I would have done so sooner, but regrettably events following my departure from Vane have resulted in my spending long periods in isolation, and I have only recently . . . returned to the world." 

"So you want to see the demonstration Altus is putting on tonight, I take it. I also take it that you no longer have your Master's Ring." 

I shook my head. "I left it on my desk when I departed the city. What happened to it after that . . ." I shrugged. As with all master mages in the Magic Guild, I had received an enchanted ring sealed to me upon attaining that rank, but when I'd become the Magic Emperor, I'd had no more use for the trappings of a mere Guild Premier. I regretted that a bit now, as, if I'd known where the damned thing was, I wouldn't have needed this charade. That ring alone would have identified me as a member of the Magic Guild. 

"It's possible that we may still have it—wait here for a moment." 

She rose to her feet and left the room, then returned, a few moments later, with a largish bronze casket. It was obviously uncomfortably heavy for her, and I left my own chair to help her with it. 

"This is ancient," I said, running my fingers lightly over the half-effaced band of decorative engraving that edged the lid. 

Milia nodded. "It's almost as old as the Guild—a good twenty-five hundred years. It contains all the Guild master's rings that couldn't, for whatever reason, be buried with their owners' bodies, or whose owners are unknown. I expect there are a few fakes among them," she added with a tired smile. "Open it up and take a look." 

Three shallow trays were stacked inside the casket. The bottom one was empty, while the other two held perhaps fifty or sixty gold rings between them. Meeting Milia's eyes calmly, I brushed my hand over the contents of the topmost tray, on which the Guild crest was etched in a sharp-edged style unfamiliar to me, which presumably meant they were of recent vintage. Naturally, none of them responded to my touch. 

The Guildmistress was still watching me, so I shrugged and brushed my hand over the lower tray as well—I'd already noticed that my ring, which had been custom-cast rather than following the standard Guild pattern, wasn't there. 

When I removed my hand, however, Milia was frowning. 

"That's odd—there's a gap there . . . Wasn't that the ring with the swirly pattern on the band? I certainly don't see it anywhere else, and it was distinctive . . ." 

I went cold for just an instant. So, my ring _had_ been here, and then someone has stolen it . . . Again, the question was _why_? And furthermore, how had the thief known whose ring it was when Milia herself hadn't? 

"Anyway," Milia added, "it looks like your ring has been well and truly lost, and I don't have any spare blanks at the moment. I suppose I'll have to tell the door guard that you have special permission to attend Altus' demonstration." 

"Thank you," I responded, my mind largely elsewhere. 

Despite the care I'd taken not to use my real name, someone _knew_. Presumably, it was due to that damned portrait Caithra had mentioned, and about which I didn't dare ask unless I was willing to draw others' attention to the resemblance. 

I didn't like this one bit, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, either, until this unusually perspicacious individual chose to reveal himself.


	7. Chapter 7

Arriving early for the demonstration the next evening, I leaned against the wall in the shadow of a pillar rather than taking one of the chairs that had been set out for the audience, and surveyed the room, again having the feeling of being somewhat dislocated in time. 

It was the covered table that did it, I decided. Eighteen hundred years ago, it would have been set up in exactly the same place and covered with a very similar sheet of slightly stained muslin. If not for the weight of the armour I wore, I might have been here to check Nash's work on my own behalf before revealing a carefully calculated fragment of my discoveries to Lemia and the others. This time, the sheet had only a few small lumps under it—nothing larger than, say, a dead rat. Or would Altus bring in a live rat and kill it in front of us? It wasn't something that I would have tried in his place—it was too easy to be accused of trickery if you tried something like that. Training rats to play dead was certainly easier than bringing them back to life . . . 

Other mages were beginning to trickle into the hall now, and while I didn't dare use magic to veil my presence from them—it would have been as good as setting out a signpost, in such company—I could and did make myself less noticeable by drawing back even deeper into the shadows. Still, one or two of them were aware enough of my presence to glance at me. I pretended to ignore them, keeping most of my attention on the unattended table. 

Altus waited until the attending masters were seated before he entered the room by flashily teleporting himself to a position near the table. I snorted softly, and reflected that it probably would have served him right if he'd mis-visualized the room and not popped out of the teleport again until everyone had given up and left in disgust—it was a common elementary mistake that I'd made myself while I'd been learning the spell, and the slightly dizzy look on his face indicated to me that the current Premier still wasn't used to the feeling of abruptly vanishing from one place and appearing in another. 

He hadn't bothered wearing the full regalia of the Guild Premier, for which I didn't blame him—that ridiculous headdress had always made me feel like a bit of an idiot too—but his plain black robe had a sheen to it that probably meant an ordinary town-dweller could have eaten for a year off the price of the cloth. He wore his pale hair—not silver like my own, but the palest of pale blonds, a colour which, while it had been more common among the Vile Tribe, did show up occasionally among humans—long and tied back, probably to make certain that everyone could see his ears, which, while they weren't as pointed as mine, weren't human-blunt, either. He had a Vile Tribe facial marking as well, a blue line, like a tear track, that ran down from his right eye and over his cheek to peter out near the corner of his mouth. And like most of the near-human-seeming members of the Vile Tribe, he was strikingly handsome. 

He could also have been twenty or so, fresh out of his apprenticeship, if not for the power of the magical aura that surrounded him. I didn't need to test his potential with a spell to know that he was more powerful than any other mage in the room . . . except possibly myself. Even as I thought that, his head turned in my direction for a moment, and he gave me a minute nod. I responded with a shrug. 

He opened his presentation with a shallow bow. "My friends," he said, and there was something, some undercurrent in his voice, that made me frown. "I scarcely have to explain what my demonstration tonight is intended to show you. I know that rumours that I've found the secret of raising the dead have been flying fast and furious through the Guild at all levels." He smiled, self-deprecatingly. "As usual, the stories have grown in the telling. What I've discovered is only the first step: a method of reanimating the body. The mind doesn't seem to come with it, unfortunately, and as for the soul . . ." He shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe if we ever figure out a method of detecting them, I'll be able to tell you." 

That cause several members of the audience to chuckle. Personally, I wasn't all that amused. 

There followed a lengthy explanation of the methods by which Altus had determined the condition of his revenants, which mostly consisted of teaching rats to run mazes, killing them, reviving them, and then discovering that they didn't remember how the mazes worked. I couldn't really fault him if that had really been what he'd done, but something about his words rang false . . . or was I just getting suspicious in my old age? 

" . . . However, it's about time that I presented my proof," Altus was saying. He whipped the muslin off the table, to reveal . . . a dead rat. "Ludus, your honesty is almost proverbial around here—would you mind checking my little friend to make sure that he's really dead?" 

An elderly man with the kind of face that made me think he never smiled levered himself to his feet with a cane and hobbled over to the table. He felt the rat's torso, then picked it up by the tail and shook it. 

"If it's alive, then it's paralyzed and severely hypothermic," he rasped. "I think we're safe in assuming that it really is dead." He dropped the rat and stumped back to his place. 

"Thank you," Altus said. "Then, without further ado . . ." He cupped his hands over the rat and began to chant— tradition held that even if you could invoke a spell via the short form, you used the long one for a demonstration. In this case, it was fortunate that he did: I'd never cast the spell he was using myself, and wasn't sure what the keyword was, but I recognized it within seconds. 

Altus and I were the only ones in the room not holding our breath as he removed his hands, I think. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the rat shuddered to its feet, head dragging—apparently, its neck was broken. Nevertheless, it was moving . . . although I suspected that calling it "alive" would be stretching a point. 

_Should I?_ I wondered. _Well, why not?_ Altus already knew I was here, so it wasn't likely to change anything if I decided to rain on his parade. 

In the breathless instant before the room erupted into congratulations, I stepped forward out of the shadows and said, "That's an interesting application of that spell, but I wouldn't say that the results really qualify as reanimation of the dead." 

"You have a lot of nerve, whoever you are," croaked old Ludus. 

"Master Galin, are you saying that you know the spell that Premier Altus just used?" The question came from Milia Ausa, seated toward the rear of the room. 

"In fact, I do," I said crisply. "Two thousand years ago, when the Vile Tribe was confined to the Frontier, they developed that spell for emergency support of newborn infants of their own kind who were too weak to survive in such a mana- poor environment. The spell was designed to keep them alive by concentrating the mana around them until they could be moved to an environment that offered a more permanent means of support. Apparently, in the more mana-rich environment present here, the spell brings enough mana together to produce something like a ghost or spirit, which then attaches itself to the vacant body. It is, as I said, an interesting result, but not really all that useful, as the spell wasn't designed to last more than a few hours." 

"So you're saying that all I've managed to produce is a kind of . . . mana automaton?" Altus sounded less disappointed than I would have expected. 

"Indeed," I replied. "Furthermore, I suspect that your expectations at the time the spell is cast have some influence on the revenant's actions, although it will require further research to confirm that." 

"Hmm. I think I would like to speak with you at more length . . . Galin, was it?" 

I inclined my head. "At your convenience, then." Azure wasn't going to be pleased if I decided to remain in the city for another day, but if it bothered her that much, I'd release Meloth temporarily so that he could go on ahead with her—I was certainly capable of catching up with them if I thought it worth the effort. 

"Excellent. If you'd care to stay until I'm done answering questions . . ." 

I dipped my head again, and stepped back out of the center of attention. 

Questions were few and desultory, although my curiosity was briefly ignited when Ludus asked where Altus had obtained the not-resurrection spell and the latter admitted that he'd found it in a rather fragmentary book he'd inherited from his mother. I'd heard that a few of the Vile Tribe's healer-mages had written grimoires, but I'd never actually seen one—by the time I'd made contact with the Frontier settlements, their people had been struggling too hard just to survive to have energy to spare for civilized pastimes like writing books. Indeed, few of them had even been literate—learning to read and write also took time away from the necessities of survival. 

I felt the slow burn of anger inside me, and quashed it. I still felt that Althena's actions toward the Vile Tribe had been unjust. Their being latecomers to Lunar who practiced an unusual magic was _not_ a reason to condemn them to a slow death in the barren lands . . . Eighteen centuries ago, it had been the last straw for me, the final proof that Althena was an irrational, untrustworthy being who had to be brought under control for the good of our world. Now . . . well, it was all water under the bridge. Althena was gone, her victims had been released from their prison . . . and I was still here, a living anachronism. 

I snorted and shook my head, dragging myself out of my reverie. People were beginning to leave the hall, and Altus was speaking a negating spell over his undead rat. 

I waited a few minutes, until we were alone, before walking up to the table. 

"If you really do have a Vile Tribe grimoire, I would appreciate an opportunity to examine it," I said quietly. 

"I would be honoured to lend it to you, Lord Ghaleon." 

My sword was instantly at his throat. Altus just stared levelly back at me. 

"How long have you known?" I snapped. 

The blond Guild Premier spread his hands. "Until right this instant, I didn't _know_ exactly, but . . . well . . . a Guild master mage of your distinctive appearance, carrying a sword . . . who else could you have been? Granted, the fact that you're supposed to be dead made me wonder, but you'd already come back once . . . I suspected as soon as Tarret described you to me." 

I muttered a tired curse and lowered my blade. _That damned portrait, wherever it is._ "I hope you haven't spread that information around too much." 

"I haven't spoken to anyone, nor will I, unless you give me your permission." Altus ducked his head, and added, "I've always admired you, you know. You're a legend among my mother's people—the mage who forced Althena's hand and gave them the freedom of the Green Earth." 

"It wasn't quite like that," I said—less a protest than a statement of fact. 

"I didn't really think so, after I'd read the Guild histories . . . but I think it _is_ true that if you hadn't done anything, nothing would have changed, and the Vile Tribe would still be trapped out on the Frontier, slowly wasting away. Thank you—I don't think any of us has ever said that to you, have we?" 

Suddenly, I couldn't meet his eyes. "There's little enough to thank me for," I said gruffly. "If that had been all I meant to do, there were better ways." 

"Nevertheless . . ." Altus shook his head. "Damn, there are so many questions I'd like to ask you that it's difficult to sort them into any kind of order. Like, why did you come back this time?" 

"I wish I knew," I said. "It certainly wasn't any deliberate action on my part, and unlike the last time, no one else has yet claimed responsibility." My hand absently drifted up to the left side of my face. 

Altus blinked several times as he absorbed that. He took a deep breath, seemed about to say something else, then stopped. "Would you mind if we moved up to my office? Tarret's probably going to be coming in soon to clean up after me, and you probably don't want him overhearing . . ." 

I bestowed a wry smile on the dead rat on the table. "And to think my apprentices used to accuse _me_ of coming up with unusual and unpleasant things for them to do. Yes, by all means, let's go upstairs." 

As I followed him to the second floor, I wondered what it was that bothered me about Altus. Somehow, his hero worship seemed to ring a little false compared to Meloth's, although I might not even have noticed if not for my recent exposure to the young beastman. Perhaps it was just that his family had taught him to idolize me while his teachers had taught him to hate me. It would have been nice if it were that simple. 

His office was austere, although not quite as thoroughly so as I had kept the room when I'd held his title— mostly because, rather than doing the sensible thing and hiding the wall safe behind a bookshelf carefully designed for the purpose, he'd covered it up with a painting. I found myself studying it idly as its owner fidgeted. It was a landscape, an attempt at depicting the Frontier that had been executed by an artist who, however technically skilled, had never actually seen it. The rocks were too rounded, for one thing—everything on the Frontier was sharp-edged, uneroded by water or wind. Even the air there was dead. 

"Lord Ghaleon?" 

I turned to face my host. "My apologies—I was . . . lost in memory." And I half-smiled. "So much on Lunar has changed since I was young that I sometimes feel a little . . . disconnected." 

"I can imagine." 

I shook my head. "No, you can't. I doubt even the dragons can, really, although the White Dragon of Althena and I must have been born only a few years apart. But the dragons have lived all those years . . . between, rather than just touching down unexpectedly in disjointed eras." I couldn't understand why I was saying all this—perhaps I'd just been wanting to talk to someone about it for a while now. "Rather like the difference between walking somewhere and teleporting, I suppose. It takes far more than two uses of the relevant spell to grow accustomed to the latter . . . as you know." 

Altus nodded. 

"And trying to pretend that you've never lived in any era but the present makes things an order of magnitude more complicated," I added. "Claiming to have spent the last century or so as a hermit on some remote island can only cover for so much. My apprentice has already noted that I know a great deal about what, to him, is ancient history—I can only imagine how he'd react if he learned the truth." 

I pulled out the chair behind Altus' desk, unbuckled my swordbelt, and sat down—propping my blade so that the hilt was near at hand, just in case. Altus didn't protest, and I wondered if he knew I'd chosen that particular chair mostly in order to gauge his reaction. Perhaps, I thought as he took one of the chairs opposite me, he would find seeing his office from a visitor's point of view an interesting and novel experience. 

Altus opened his mouth, closed it again, smiled wryly, and said, "And again, I barely know where to begin." He began to rummage through a pile of papers on one side of his desk. "Ah, here we are—do you remember this?" 

I accepted the booklet that he was holding out, observing that it was a typical Guild researcher's publication, written on paper that had been magically treated to preserve it through the centuries, and, flipping it open, discovered that it was one of mine, on the topic of large-scale propulsion spells. 

"I do," I confirmed. "You must realize, though, that I wasn't able to test a lot of what's in here—people tend to complain if you start floating mountains off their roots, and you can only learn so much by playing with icebergs." If I'd had more time, I might have tried some of it out on the Grindery, but Alex had forced my hand . . . 

"I understand," Altus said. "I've still got questions for you, though. For instance . . ." 

It was such a night as I hadn't spent in many years— discussing abstruse points of magical theory until dawn began to dye the horizon pink. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed such things, and Altus proved an able conversational partner—both because of his knowledge, and because of his radically different viewpoint on certain matters. I had always been, despite my mastery of abstract arcana, more interested in the practical applications of my discoveries than in research for research's sake, while Altus was precisely the opposite. More than once, I found myself thinking that, once my other business was done, I could be quite comfortable settling down in Vane again, returning to the life that my stint as the Magic Emperor had interrupted. 

How long had it been since I had last been able to see a future for myself beyond the end of whatever conflict I was in the middle of? Years, surely, even on my personal, subjective scale. Was it wrong for someone like me, who'd spent so much time trying to change the world, to suddenly discover that he wanted only peace? 

As I was thinking that, Altus yawned and stretched. "Damn, I don't think I've stayed up this late since I was a student myself. I should get to bed—I have to teach a class in meta- oppositional mechanics first thing in the morning, and a couple of the thirds we've got this year are _sharp_. If you're free tomorrow night, though . . ." 

"We'll see," I said. "I also have a student to teach, and we were travelling with a couple of other people who have business out beyond Vane. It may prove less trouble to escort them to their destination, then return, than to explain why I want to stay in the city. Until I find out why I was returned to Lunar this time, I don't want to draw too much attention to myself." 

"I'll send a messenger to the inn, then," Altus said. We were both on our feet by this time, and I tugged my tunic straight and picked up my sword. "Good night, Lord Ghaleon— or, should I say, good morning?" 

"Good night, Premier Altus," I said evenly, watching him while pretending to fumble at the buckle of my swordbelt. 

I continued the pretense until I heard Altus begin to descend the stairs, then pulled the belt smoothly into place and cinched it. Quickly, I threw a "notice me not" spell over the doorway—I was less concerned with being spotted by other full mages, at this hour, than I was with being interrupted by beginning apprentices—then turned to the painting that concealed the safe. 

I wasn't really expecting to find anything interesting inside, since Altus doubtless knew that I would know that the safe was there and how to open it, so it was a bit of a shock when I saw the wan pink light from the window glittering upon a familiar object. 

Why would Altus have my master's ring—and why would he have hidden it so ineptly? 

Suddenly wary, I prodded the curlicued band with my forefinger. White light flickered and then settled into the lines of the incised crest. It was the real one, then, and not a copy. 

Frowning, I rummaged quickly through the rest of the safe, but found only semi-secret research documents. If Altus owned anything genuinely incriminating, he'd known better than to store it in a safe that the Guildmistress also knew how to open. 

But the ring . . . 

I considered taking it—Altus couldn't very well have stopped me, since it was clearly mine and he wasn't supposed to have it in the first place—but in the end, I decided to try my best to leave no evidence of my snooping. Let Premier Altus wonder if I'd been curious or merely fumble-fingered with exhaustion when he'd left me. 

I sealed the safe and returned the painting to its place, my thoughts tottering along in fits and starts—I really was tired. 

Altus might not even know the ring was mine, since it wasn't exactly labelled as such. He might just have been curious as to whether the design on the band represented any special properties, and forgotten to tell Milia that he was borrowing it to test something out. If that were the case, I was worrying about nothing. If he _did_ know . . . well, given the show he'd put on tonight, it was _possible_ that he'd just wanted some relic of me, and the ring had been available and unobtrusive. If so, he might well return it to me when he remembered that he had it. 

Or, if tonight's performance had been a sham . . . what? Somehow, I couldn't believe that Altus was responsible for my resurrection, but that didn't necessarily mean that he didn't know who was. Or he might just be an opportunist who, having recognized me, was out to cultivate me . . . and even that could be something as innocent as his wanting a research partner. Or he could have had some more sinister motivation that I didn't yet have the information to piece together. 

I rubbed my eyes tiredly and dismissed the notice-me- not that I'd slapped across the door. Perhaps a few hours of sleep would clear my head. I was going to need all my wits about me to deal with this. 

Intrigue, in my experience, requires much more concentration and alertness than magical research.


	8. Chapter 8

When I told Azure the next morning that I intended to stay in Vane indefinitely, she gave me a tight-lipped glare but said only that she supposed she'd have to wait me out, then. Meloth didn't seem to care much either way. He appeared to be quite comfortable living at the inn, practicing his magic, and playing with little Irina. I suspected that neither of them was going to be happy when the time came for them to separate. 

Immediately after I finished with his morning lesson, I took myself to the Great Library, and spent perhaps half an hour pretending to browse my way along the shelves nearest a certain curtained wall alcove until I was certain that no one was watching me. Then I slipped past the curtain and placed my hands against what initially appeared to be a blank stone wall. 

I murmured the first few words of a spell-chant, testing. When that got no response, I added a few more, then switched to a different spell that got part of the embedded lock- pattern that held the door in the wall shut to flare gold and white. It would have been easier if I'd had my master's ring—all I'd have had to do then was press the crest against an unobtrusive little depression, and the door would have opened—but I'd long ago read the monogram in which the magus who'd created the lock had detailed exactly how he'd done it, and I was confident in my ability to pick it. 

Ten minutes and a dozen spells later, I managed to complete the lock pattern, which flared one last time and went out. A gentle push moved one section of the wall back into an opening that hadn't been accessible a moment earlier, and I used the roughness of the stone surface to slide it aside until I could step through the opening. 

The staircase was barely two feet wide, built into the wall of the Library back when the original building had been constructed. It was also completely unlit—if you knew this place existed, you were supposed to be able to cast light spells. I chose to find my way forward in the dark instead, feeling out the uneven stairs with my feet. Bringing my weight down on the third tread caused the door back into the Library to slide soundlessly shut, but that didn't bother me—even if it turned out that I needed to get out in a hurry, there was no lock on this side. 

After the second time that I got a faceful of cobwebs, I began descending with my left arm raised in front of my face. Well, the stairs down from the main Library had been considered the back entrance even in my day, and it was admittedly difficult to get a gaggle of master mages to clean anything, but this was a disgrace. 

The secret research library of the Magic Guild of Vane is located in a series of climate-controlled vaults three stories below street level, and by the time I reached the end of the stairs, I was heartily sick of feeling my way around in the dark . . . not to mention that there was no way that I was going to find what I was looking for without a light. I cursed softly and conjured the dimmest one I could manage. 

Despite the condition of the stairs themselves, the wall diagram at their feet appeared to be up-to-date. The amount of open space left in the vaults had shrunk a great deal over the course of the past two thousand years—hardly a surprise, really, but things had gotten to the point that they were going to have to think about drilling a new vault soon, for the first time in the history of the city. I had to guide my light in close in order to read some of the smaller writing, and when I did, I frowned. For some reason, there was an entire section of material pertaining to the massacre of twenty years ago. Why would any of the documentation about _that_ be considered so sensitive that it had to be hidden away down here? 

I threaded my way between bookshelves, walking softly and steering carefully clear of the puddles of light where various Guild mages were doing research of their own. At one point, I had to wait for half an eternity while two of them stood at the entrance to a vault, conversing, but at last, they left, permitting me to proceed. 

The material on the massacre filled three of the big, heavy shelves, and appeared to be a jumbled mixture of personal journals, research notes, and other matter that I wouldn't have thought relevant if it weren't still stained with old blood. It had to be the contents of the personal libraries of the slain mages . . . but again, why was it being kept down here? 

I skimmed quickly over the shelves and selected a few things—two of the journals, a pile of miscellaneous research notes, and what looked like a copy of the official report on the incident. Then I skimmed my hand over the spines of the remaining books, redistributing them to make it less obvious that there was anything missing. Only when I'd done that did I take my choices further back into the vaults, to a little cul-de-sac lined with long-obsolete works on magical philosophy written by an early mage whose research data was more notable for its volume than its scholarship. The dust told me that no one had been back here in quite a long time . . . which meant that I was probably safe. 

I leaned back against a shelf and began to read. 

The journals contained nothing of interest, although one of the writers had been interrupted by "a knock at the door" the very night of the massacre, and left spatters of his blood on the page. The research notes . . . I riffled through them quickly, until I was arrested by the word "resurrection" on a sheet halfway down the pile. The writer appeared to have been working on something remarkably similar to Altus' research . . . no, had been working _with_ Altus, who must, at the time, have been a very new master. 

I returned to the shelves, this time to seek out anything written in a particular hand, and had amassed a stack of papers and a bound journal when the approach of a bright light required me to snuff my own and retreat back into the shadows. As the accompanying footsteps got closer, though, I started to gather myself for a teleport . . . just in case. 

They finally stopped just on the other side of the row of bookshelves in whose shadow I was hiding—a nuisance, because it meant that I couldn't move until whoever-it-was had left. 

"All right, so what did you want me to talk about—and keep your voice down! We're only relatively private here." Altus' voice, startling because I hadn't expected to encounter anyone I knew down here—with dozens of masters in Vane at any one time, the probability was low. 

But if Altus' presence surprised me, the next voice to speak chilled me. 

"So is your mystery mage truly the one of whom we spoke?" Softer, rather than the booming, distorted sound I remembered, and less confident, but there could be no mistaking the speaker—I'd heard that voice too often, all those years during which its owner had ruled my life. 

But how could Zophar still be alive? 

"Yes, there's no doubt—even if he hadn't admitted it, he was using a fairly transparent alias." 

"So the traitor Ghaleon lives." 

_Out for revenge, are you?_ I smiled thinly. _We'll see about that._

"And I take it that you want me to do something about it," Altus said, in a calm, even tone. 

"Of course I do. Why do you hesitate?" 

Altus sighed. "It's just that it seems like such a waste, now that I've met the man. He's everything you said he was— brilliant and powerful. He could be an immensely valuable ally." 

"He cannot be trusted," Zophar said flatly. "Eight hundred years ago, he managed to betray me, even though I captured him in the instant that he was about to return to Lunar and kept him on a short leash thereafter. Even though I was feeding off his lifeforce to keep him weakened. No bonds that I can devise can hold him—he is far too cunning." 

I bit my lip as the implications of that set my mind to racing. Zophar had just hinted that he _hadn't_ been responsible for my resurrection of eight hundred years ago—he'd merely taken advantage of my confusion at the time to steal the credit. Then what _had_ brought me back, that time or this? 

"Oh, very well, then," Altus was saying. "You do realize that I can't attack him head-on—he's too strong for that. I mean, we _are_ talking about the Magic Emperor, after all. I'm going to have to come up with a plan." 

"Don't spend too long considering your options," Zophar growled. "With every moment that passes, Ghaleon is recovering a bit more of the power that his resurrection drained from him. As you say, we are speaking of a man who almost succeeded in challenging the gods. Our only advantage is that he has always used the power of others as a crutch—he has no idea what he himself is capable of." 

Somehow, I managed to keep from laughing out loud. Just because I did my best never to let on when I'd exhausted myself magically, Zophar thought I was . . . I'd seldom heard anything so ridiculous. 

"You're telling me that he _wasn't_ at full power last night?" 

"He hasn't even yet reached the maximum level I permitted him eight centuries ago, much less the maximum he is capable of." 

"But that's—" 

Zophar laughed. "So now you begin to understand the true magnitude of the task I have set you. Be careful, Altus. I will contact you again in a few days' time." 

Silence. Then Altus' light began to move. When it was three rows away, I felt it was safe to let myself relax a bit and take deeper breaths than I'd dared while eavesdropping. That was almost reflexive, though—most of my mind was busy with other matters. 

If Zophar had been draining off part of my power while I'd been playing Dragonmaster on his behalf, maybe he was right and I didn't know my own true strength. True, my long ago confrontation with Alex really had stretched my powers to the limit, but I'd also been trying to control a goddess _and_ the spirits of four recalcitrant dead dragons, an effort which had been sapping my will even as it added to my magical power. Sheer mental exhaustion had kept me from using all the raw magic I'd had at my disposal at the time. 

I snorted. _All that means is that my true limit is determined by my mental endurance and the strength of my will, rather than my capacity to channel raw mana._ There were precedents . . . and anyway, it didn't much matter right now— once again, I had more things to worry about than just myself. 

Altus was working for Zophar. Why? What could the evil godling possibly have offered him that he wanted badly enough to subordinate himself to such a creature? And, by extension, had Altus been responsible for the massacre of twenty years ago? 

The answer to that last, I realized, might be in my hands right now. I'd retreated into the shadows still holding the journal and research notes of the dead beastman mage who appeared to have been Altus' mentor. They might give me some insight into the young Premier's character and motivations. 

Once more, I ensconced myself in the cul-de-sac full of obsolete philosophical works, and began to read. And I rapidly discovered a few things. 

The beastman mage whose journal I now held had been . . . not Altus' immediate predecessor as Premier, given the timing, but probably the one before that. That immediately made me suspicious—if Altus had been the third most powerful mage in Vane at the time of the massacre, and the second most powerful had been elderly or otherwise frail, the death of the beastman would have ensured that Altus would eventually achieve his present position. The irony was that, according to the beastman, Altus would have displaced him eventually anyway. Members of the Vile Tribe tend to mature more slowly than humans, both physically and magically, and at twenty-three, Altus-the-hybrid had only just been beginning to come into his full strength. 

More interesting, and perhaps more damning, was the account of Altus' history that his mentor had set down. It seemed that Altus had once had a twin brother, who had died in some unspecified accident while they'd both been students at the Magic Guild. Whatever had happened, Altus had apparently blamed himself for it. And it was after that incident that the future Premier had become obsessed with resurrection magic. 

"Did Zophar promise to bring your brother back?" I whispered to the dusty air. Oh, it all made sense now—even Altus' flattery of me. Zophar must have pushed him into touching off the massacre, which had been _intended_ to be only the murder of a single mage, but had escalated into something more either because the dead weren't capable of understanding a target more complex than "beastman", or as a misguided attempt to hide the real objective. Then Altus had found out that the dark godling didn't really have the power to bring back the dead . . . but by then, he couldn't back out of the alliance, because he'd already given Zophar some impressive blackmail material. And then, I'd shown up, alive again, without any help from Zophar . . . and Altus had set out to cultivate me in the hope that I'd tell him a secret I didn't have. Even the demonstration of the previous night might have been staged to get my attention—I couldn't see any other reason for Altus to do something that I, in his place, would have considered dangerously reckless. 

So now that part of the knot was unravelled—my opponents were Altus, who wanted his brother back, and behind him, Zophar, who wanted revenge, and presumably the removal of what he saw as an obstacle. The dark godling probably had other followers as well, but I doubted any were as highly placed as the Premier of Vane's Magic Guild. The assassin in Saith had presumably either been one of those himself, or had been hired by someone who was. 

Of course, all of that relied on my interpretation of a single phrase spoken by Zophar, and led me back to the frustrating, unanswerable question of how I'd ended up in Pentagulia eight hundred years after my second death. "Althena's Grace" was becoming a less likely explanation by the second. _Someone_ had to know the answer, or at least have the means of finding out. A shame I'd always been lousy at divination spells, but that's the one branch of magic in which a strong will is actually a weakness—it pushes the magic to show you what you want to see, instead of what _is_. 

To distract myself, I shuffled research papers, and almost immediately found what seemed to be a more powerful variant of the Vile Tribe magic concentration spell Altus had used on the rat. So now I had a method as well as a motive for the massacre—if the spell's secondary use had been obvious, instead of mentioned only as a cryptic annotation, Altus would have been caught long since. Or would he? Would the evidence hold together for someone who didn't know of Zophar's involvement? 

Nevertheless, I folded the papers and slipped them into my pocket, on the grounds that they might yet turn out to be useful. 

_So what, in the Goddess' name, do I do now?_ I asked myself with a sigh. Play Altus for a while, or confront him? And if I chose the latter, alone or before witnesses? Or . . . what else could I do? Find someone who was good with divination magic, and pepper him or her with questions in the hope of netting myself some fragment of new information? _I hate being on the defensive._

My stomach growled, and I suddenly realized that I must have been down here for hours . . . which meant that the best thing I could do just now was have lunch. I chuckled. _At last, a simple decision._

I allowed myself a dim light to climb the back stairs by, shielding it with my body from anyone who might have been looking up from below, and used the handles on the inside of the door to the library to pull it in and slide it open. Stepping through into the alcove, I brushed my hand lightly against the recess intended to accept a master's ring in order to seal the entrance to the vaults shut again, then held my breath and listened for a moment. Deciding that there wasn't anyone nearby, I then stepped through the curtain. 

Not only wasn't there anyone near the alcove, but the Great Library seemed to be deserted. I frowned as I strode down the main aisle toward the door. I couldn't remember ever having seen the place completely empty before—even in the middle of the night, there was always a librarian on duty . . . or there had been, two thousand years ago. In the timeless atmosphere of the Magic City, it was easy to forget just how long I had been away. Perhaps the librarians now took a lunch break, or whoever was still in the building was out of sight in the annex. 

The door, when I reached it, certainly wasn't locked. The sunlight dazzled me as I stepped through—even the main library wasn't all that brightly lit, and I'd spent hours in the vaults . . . As my vision cleared, the first thing I noticed was that a man lounging against the wall beside the entrance to the Library was giving me a dirty look. I ignored him and turned up the street to head for the inn . . . but the scenelet was repeated with almost every Vane native that I passed. It was as though, in the handful of hours I'd been down in the vaults, someone had been working hard to turn the entire city against me. 

After a couple of blocks, I realized that I was being followed, too. I pretended not to notice—I was taking a very public route to a public destination, so let him tag along, whoever he was—but it reinforced my feeling that something was very wrong. 

"Hey, Galin! Over here!" 

I turned, and discovered Azure waving at me from a table outside a cafe just up the street. Meloth and the little girl were with her. I shrugged, and altered my course to head over and join them. They were the closest thing I had to allies anywhere in the city, after all. 

"At the Library again, were you?" the blue-haired woman asked as I pulled out the fourth chair at the table. 

I nodded. Azure snorted. 

"Well, that's odd, because Meloth couldn't find you there half an hour ago when he went to look." 

"That," I said dryly, "is hardly my fault." 

For a moment, the boy looked hurt, then he half- smiled and said, "I guess I'm just going to have to learn the interior layout of the place a bit better, then." 

"Not until after you get back from Taben's Peak, I hope," Azure said. "If we ever get there in the first place, that is. Galin, how much longer do you intend to stay in the city?" 

"Not much longer," I said. "Unfortunately, I found the answers to several of my questions this morning." 

"'Unfortunately'? That doesn't sound good." 

I sighed. "It isn't. I know, now, who slaughtered the beastmen of Vane twenty years ago, and why . . . but he is only a pawn, and I need to get at the chessmaster. Which is not, in this case, a simple thing to do." 

Azure shook her head. "I really don't understand you. You manage to unravel a twenty-year-old mystery in a matter of days, and all it does is make you depressed. Sometimes you take yourself too seriously—in fact, you're almost as bad as Zaile." _Who?_ I wondered, but Azure was still speaking. "Can't you celebrate just a little before you worry about this 'chessmaster' of yours?" 

_Ghaleon, you've got to learn to lighten up a little, or you're going to get ulcers._ I found myself smiling involuntarily—how many times had Dyne told me that? 

"That's better," Azure said in a satisfied tone of voice. "Now, where's that waiter . . . ?" 

The area did indeed seem curiously deserted. Two other tables that had been occupied when I sat down were now vacant, and no one was visible anywhere in the street except a group of mages wearing the badges of Guild Enforcers, who were headed rapidly in our direction. 

_Now what?_ I wondered as I pushed my chair back from the table and stood. My hand rested lightly on the hilt of my sword, but I didn't draw it, not yet. There might still be a way for me to talk my way out of whatever was coming. Or at least, that's what I thought until the Enforcers, fanning out around me, revealed their leader. 

Altus. 

"Ghaleon, master mage of Vane," intoned the blond Premier. "You are under arrest for the murder of Guildmistress Milia Ausa." 

Azure froze in place, halfway to her feet. 

"That's insane," Meloth protested. "My master's name is Galin, not Ghaleon, and he's been in the Great Library all . . . morning . . ." His voice started to trail off a bit as he remembered that he hadn't been able to find me and therefore couldn't really be certain what I'd been doing, then firmed up again. "He didn't kill the Guildmistress." 

I tilted my head. "Indeed, the matter of names aside, why would I have killed Milia Ausa? I barely knew her." 

"You did it because you were commanded by your master, Zophar," Altus said evenly. His eyes, I noted, were shadowed. 

I couldn't help it—I laughed. "Oh, bravo. I truly do have to commend you. Telling the truth in all but one thing is always such an elegant ploy. Tell me, Altus, how did you do it? A knife in the back? She trusted you, of course, so she would have let you approach her without a second thought. And to think that there are those who call _me_ a traitor." The Enforcers were looking at each other uncertainly, so I took the opportunity to murmur to Azure, "When I teleport you out of here, take the children and flee Vane." Her eyes widened slightly, and she gave me a fractional nod. 

"And that's a rather backhanded way to protest your innocence, Master Ghaleon," Altus said. "Nevertheless, you're coming with us." 

"Am I?" I smiled thinly. "It's strange, isn't it? Twice, now, you've claimed that I am the most powerful Premier your Guild has ever had—the man who called himself the Magic Emperor and set himself up to challenge a goddess. So, tell me, Altus, if all of that is true, why would you think _you_ have the power to make me do anything against my will?" 

Into the silence that followed that question, I spoke the keyword of a teleportation spell, and Azure, Meloth, and Irina vanished. One of the Enforcers swore and glanced wildly about. 

"We both know that there's no question of your identity," Altus said. Suddenly, he threw some small object at me. It flashed white as I plucked it from the air: my master's ring. 

"Under other circumstances, I might even thank you for returning this," I said, slipping it into its old place on the middle finger of my left hand. It felt a bit odd—even in strictly subjective terms, it had been nearly a decade since I had last worn it. "Just as, if I thought that what you had in mind was a fair trial, I might consider going with you, to clear my name of this particular crime . . . but we both know that there won't be any fairness in this. Indeed, I think the most embarrassing part of this whole confrontation is that you came here hoping to be able to play me for a fool." 

Altus shrugged. "In case you hadn't noticed, there are eleven of us and only one of you. One way or the other, I intend to put you on trial." 

"At what cost?" I asked. I needed to stall as long as I could—every additional second Altus was here was another second Azure had to get herself and Meloth and the little girl out of the city. "Do you have any idea how much of Vane we could destroy, between the two of us? Until the new Guildmistress is confirmed in her position, you lead the Guild. Do you think anyone here will thank you for acting recklessly?" 

"You keep on acting like the two of us are alone here," Altus said. "Must be a pleasant delusion." 

"We two are so much more powerful than your minions that I think it's reasonable to describe them as irrelevant— " I let my remark flow smoothly into the keyword of a muting spell, and, as looks of understanding and chagrin crossed the faces of Altus' escort, I charged straight at the young Premier, knocking him out of the way with my shoulder. _This should be . . . interesting,_ I thought grimly as I raced off down the street, deeper into the city. 

Magic isn't a discipline that really encourages physical fitness, and I _could_ have outrun my pursuers—even Altus, who seemed to be in relatively good shape, hadn't been hardened by weeks of recent foot travel—but that wasn't the object of the exercise. At the same time, however, I couldn't make it too obvious that I was leading them on. Striking the appropriate balance required more of my concentration than was truly safe, especially given that Altus had been strong enough to throw off my mute spell and was flinging fire magic at me whenever he could catch his breath enough to gasp out a keyword. I countered with ice magic. Occasionally, our spells collided in midair and filled the streets with fog, making my task even more difficult. 

I led them on quite the chase before I finally made the inevitable wrong turn into a dead-end street and decided that I'd had enough. It had been several minutes—surely Azure was on her way out of the city by now, with Meloth in tow, which meant that I'd fulfilled my responsibilities toward them. In the few seconds that it took Altus to catch up to me, I erected a wall of ice between us. 

"It's been fun," I told him as he slid to a panting stop on the other side of it. Then, as his fire spell turned it into vapour, I teleported. 

It almost killed me. 

The running spell-battle had left me weaker than I'd realized, and the sudden drain of the teleport tore the image of my destination from my mind. I felt the spell hesitate, just for an instant, and then it spat me out somewhere that wasn't the hill outside of Vane that I'd been aiming for—somewhere softly lit by something other than the harshness of the sun, carpeted in grass and fragrant flowers. 

Just as I passed out, I heard the sound of hushed voices, and of water flowing.


	9. Chapter 9

I woke slowly, aching from having slept in my armour, with a sword-pommel digging into my side, and lay with my eyes closed for a moment, wondering what the soft, warm weight pressed against my neck and chin was, and the other one that had spread itself on my hip . . . the one that had fitted itself into the crook of my knees . . . it was as though I was lying in the middle of a pile of sleeping kittens, or of . . . 

I opened my eyes. At the first hint of movement, the creature who'd had her head pillowed against my chin sat up and stretched. 

"He's awake!" she shouted shrilly, and I was instantly enveloped in a cloud of pixies, all of them talking at once. 

"Ghaleon—" 

"Dear Ghaleon—" 

I chuckled as I began to work my way into a sitting position. "Please, little ones—one at a time." My smile lingered as I gazed around the room. So someone had been tending the garden I had created as a refuge for these delicate creatures, so long ago. "I'm surprised that you even recognize me," I added— the lifespan of a pixie is only about the same as that of a human. 

"We used our magic, and passed the memories on from one generation to the next," said the blue-winged pixie who'd been doubling as an alarm clock, in an unusually sober tone of voice for one of her kind. "We didn't want to ever forget you." 

"After all, Ruby says you're a hero," added one of the others. "Even Nall told us that it was important that someone remember the good things about you." 

"And remembering is one thing that we're good at, when we want to be," the blue pixie added firmly. 

"So you are," I said. Gently, I scooped her up and set her on my shoulder. She wriggled in delight, and had to grab at my hair to keep from falling off. "Is it Ruby and Nall who've been looking after the garden?" 

"Ruby, mostly," said the blue pixie. "Nall only comes here every few years, and when he does, he mostly just looks around and sighs. Sometimes, he tells us stories, but . . . well, he never seems very happy." 

"He says he comes here to remind himself that even bad people can do good things," said a red pixie who was hovering just above my head. "That doesn't make sense though, does it—I mean, that this place should make him think of things like that?" 

I sighed. "It has to do with some things that happened between Nall and I a long time ago, when I was young and stupid. I tried to do something that I thought was right and important, but it hurt some friends of his, and Nall probably still thinks of me as a bad person because of it." 

"You made a mistake?" said the blue pixie. "But that's how people learn, isn't it? It shouldn't make Nall think of you as a bad person." 

One of the reasons I loved the pixies so was that their innocence sometimes let them see straight to the simple heart of a complex matter. 

"I made a very big mistake, little one," I tried to explain. "Several of them, actually. And those mistakes hurt a lot of people. Sometimes it can be difficult for people to forgive you for something like that." 

The blue pixie frowned, her face twisting up almost comically. "Oh. I guess we don't make big mistakes very often, do we? Maybe it's because we're so small." 

I laughed. "Perhaps that's so, little one. Now, I'd like to go see if there's anything left of my rooms here. I'll come back and see you again before I leave, all right?" 

She pouted. "Do you have to go at all? You could stay here, with us . . ." 

My smile twisted, turning sad. "Believe me, I'd like to—more than anything. But staying here would be making another really big mistake that would hurt a lot of people. I don't want anyone else to be hurt because of me." 

Her hand brushed lightly against my face. "Then make sure you come back soon." 

"Of course I will. I promise." 

I had never seen a pixie look haunted before. "This time, make sure you keep that promise. We remember that too, you know." 

I sifted through old memories. Yes, I had promised, right before my last confrontation with Hiro, that I would be back soon, hadn't I? 

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll try to do better this time." 

She patted my cheek. "Good." Then she slid from my shoulder and was soon lost among the other hovering pixies. 

I stretched and clambered stiffly to my feet. 

The narrow stairway that led up to my old rooms was hidden behind a section of wall at the back of the garden, a secret door that would open only to my touch. On the other side of it, a band of runes and magical notation striped walls, floor, and ceiling: the spell I'd set long ago to preserve the contents, almost as though I'd known instinctively that I'd be coming back. 

There are those who might have said it wasn't worth it. I wouldn't have called my chosen lifestyle _austere_ , exactly—I did allow myself a few luxuries—but I'd always been more focussed on my goals than on creature comforts. Of the dozen or so rooms that constituted my suite here, I'd never used more than half, and except for the study with its desk and multitudinous bookshelves, they were all rather sparsely furnished. The entry in which I now stood, for instance, held an empty weapons-rack and my second-best pair of boots, tossed into a corner. The niches and hooks with which this place's ancient builders had adorned the walls were bare. They'd built well, though—even after millennia, the lights here still worked, ceilings lighting softly as I entered each room and dimming as I left: one of the lost wonders of the Mechanical Age. 

The bathing facilities likewise dated from millennia ago—although perhaps _bathing_ wasn't the proper word. Indeed, had I not spent so much time in the Vile Tribe's settlements on the Frontier, I wouldn't have recognized the shower for what it was when I'd first found this place, but the outcasts had had a fondness for them—in combination with the right spells, they permitted the rapid recycling of a relatively small amount of water, and clean water had always been in rather short supply on the Frontier. I didn't understand why the people of the Mechanical Age had been so fond of them, though. 

The clothes I had bought in Saith went down a chute that led somewhere into the bowels of the building, to a destination I'd never cared to locate. I kept the armour, though— you never knew when it might be useful—and the sword, since I had no other right now. 

_So what do I do now?_ I asked myself as I stepped under the deluge of hot water. As far as I could see, three paths were open to me, and I needed to weigh them carefully, because the least misstep might mean, not only my own death, but the devastation of Lunar itself. 

Option number one: take the battle to Zophar as best I could, by confronting Altus again, since I couldn't get at his master. That would mean either fighting my way through the entire Magic Guild first—not impossible, but it would diminish the resources I'd have to work with when I was done—or somehow turning his intended farce of a murder trial into something . . . less farcical. At one time, I could have done that, but right now, I didn't know if there was anyone there that I could trust to be honest. Unless . . . old Ludus? A possibility, but a faint and dangerous one. Milia Ausa might have been convinced to ally herself with me, but she was dead, and I had no idea what her successor was like. 

Very well, then—Option number two: determine how to take the battle to Zophar directly. The problem there was that, with Althena long dead, the only two people I knew of who were likely to understand Zophar better than I did were Zophar himself . . . and Lucia of the Blue Star. And reaching her meant climbing the Star Dragon Tower and using the mechanisms inside to send myself across the void with no guarantee of what I might find at the other end. In the worst case, I might even end up stranding myself on the Blue Star, or perishing in the void without ever reaching my destination. 

The third option was to do nothing for now, to wait and watch for a set of circumstances that I might turn to my advantage. That was probably the riskiest course of all, since it might never come to anything worthwhile. I might still be waiting when Zophar managed to gather enough power to materialize in person. 

The only way to reduce the risk of any of those options was to acquire allies. At the moment, I had, perhaps, two of those: Meloth, useless except as a dupe, and Azure, who was intent on her own affairs and whom I suspected of concealing . . . something. And I had no idea how the two of them were responding to the debacle in Vane and Altus' revelation of my identity. The pixies were even less useful than Meloth, even if I'd been willing to ask them to put themselves at risk for my sake. As for recruiting . . . I sighed, watching suds spiral down the drain as I rinsed my hair. The dragons I might convince to help me—Nall's grudges notwithstanding, they were unlikely to want to take a chance on Zophar returning. Lucia would be invaluable, if she still lived and I could get to her. Some of the beastmen harmed and dispossessed by the massacre might also agree to ally with me, if I could convince them that Altus and Zophar really were behind what had happened . . . 

Well. My first step was probably to see if Meloth, Azure, and the child had gotten free of Vane. 

Now clean, I chose my clothing carefully—dead-black shirt and trousers, armour designed to make my shoulders look broader, a blood-red cape that fell to my ankles in thick folds, the bracers and sword that I'd bought in Saith, and my second-best boots, retrieved from the entryway. When I was done, the image that stared back at me from the mirror was . . . about midway between that of Dragonmaster Ghaleon and that of the Magic Emperor, I suppose. I smiled thinly and saluted my reflection with the inferior blade I carried, regretting, just then, both that I'd given my old sword to Hiro, all those years ago, and that my best boots were probably so much dust on a hillside near Vane by now—the second-best ones pinched a bit. Regardless, I _looked_ impressive enough, although hopefully I wouldn't need to. 

Quickly, I ate my long-delayed lunch, then descended the stairs again, to be enveloped once more in a pile of babbling pixies. 

"Ghaleon!" 

"Ghaleon . . ." 

"Ruby is here." The talkative blue pixie landed on my shoulder guard without being invited this time, and spoke into my ear. "She's looking for you." 

I frowned. " _Is_ she." It wasn't really a question. What I wanted to know was _why_ the Red Dragon had come here to look for me, and the pixies weren't likely to be able to answer that. "Thank you, little one." 

The cloud thinned a little, so that I could see her: a petite, red-haired young woman with a pert, up-turned nose, wearing a green dress with a divided skirt, crossing the garden toward us with quick, no-nonsense strides. I folded my arms and waited. She stopped a few feet away and crossed her arms in what I assumed was unconscious mimickry. 

"So you really are here. I didn't really believe it until just now. I mean, I saw the shape you were in after you and Hiro . . . No, I shouldn't even talk about that, should I? It's got to bring back bad memories." 

"Not as many as you might think," I said. "That particular death was . . . a great deal more satisfactory . . . than my first one. I went into that fight with my eyes open, and, while I wouldn't claim I had no regrets at all, I at least died fulfilling my objective." 

Ruby seemed to be waiting for me to say something more, and when I went silent, she scowled. "I guess that means _you're_ not going to tell me either." I raised my eyebrows, and she elaborated, "How you managed to come back to life. _Again._ Any more than Nall will tell me why he wasn't surprised when Azure told us that she'd met you." 

My mind was suddenly churning. Could _Nall_ have been the one responsible for my unexpected arrival in Pentagulia? I could see him wanting me as an ally against Zophar, but then why hadn't he been there when I awoke? Unless . . . could it have been that he hadn't known exactly when or where I would appear? 

"Azure is the Blue Dragon of Althena," I said instead, to cover my confusion. It did explain a lot. 

Ruby blinked. "Oh, _man . . ._ She said she hadn't told you." 

I smirked. The truth was, it had been little more than a guess, and based on what Ruby herself had just said—unless I'd been unconscious for a lot longer than I thought, there had been no way for Azure to have reached Taben's Peak on foot by now. 

"Why are you here?" I asked. 

"I was looking for you. Azure wasn't sure where you'd ended up after you got separated in Vane—she's out checking the routes from there to Taben's Peak from the air, Nall's in Vane itself, and . . . well, I thought I'd check here. Anyway, she thought you'd want to know that one of the other people you'd been travelling with—a young beastman mage named Meloth—had turned back to look for you and got caught by the Magic Guild's enforcers." 

"Barren Earth," I muttered—words considered by the Vile Tribe to be the foulest of oaths. "That fool boy . . . I don't have time for this. I have better things to do than rescue him from his own stupidity . . ." My hands were clenching into fists. 

Ruby looked alarmed. "You aren't just going to _leave_ him there, are you? Azure said they want to lock him up and throw away the key!" 

"Unfortunately, I'm responsible for him at the moment," I said. "No, I'm going to rescue him, although when I'm done with him, he may end up wishing that he'd stayed in jail." 

"You're going away again, aren't you?" said the blue pixie, wistfully. 

I sighed, and softened my voice. "Yes, little one, I'm afraid I am. One of my friends is in trouble, and I have to help him. I'll be back when I can, all right? In the meanwhile, Ruby will look after you." 

"What are you talking about?" the Red Dragon of Althena asked. "I'm coming with you."


	10. Chapter 10

In the end, Ruby won the brief argument about transportation with the telling point that the less energy I expended just getting to Vane, the better—and besides, doing things her way would allow us to pick up Azure before we got there. 

Cold wind caught in my cape and hair as we emerged onto the roof. It was about midmorning, but the sun still wasn't high enough to really warm the air in these barren lands. 

Ruby grinned. "It's a lovely day for flying." 

"I wouldn't know," I replied truthfully. 

"I hope you're good at holding on," she added, as though I hadn't spoken. "I've never carried a rider before. Nall says it isn't difficult, but . . ." 

I sighed. "Would you please just get on with it?" 

"Okay, okay." Her smile didn't dim as she approached the edge of the roof to give herself more room. She ended up as a full-sized red dragon with a big, toothy grin that would have been a lot more intimidating to someone who didn't know how to handle dragons. "Straddle the base of my neck— that's the easiest way," she said, leaning down and sideways. 

"As you say." Mounting turned out to be awkward— she was a lot higher off the ground than a horse, and I couldn't even remember the last time I'd ridden one of those. After a few precarious moments, however, I was able to seat myself in the position she'd suggested, between the bases of her wings. 

"Just don't dig your feet in too hard, or you might choke me," my mount added. "Well, ready or not . . ." 

She launched herself. There was a dizzying instant in which we were falling, and then her wings caught the wind. 

I found myself leaning over and down, fascinated by the view, just as I'd always been fascinated by views from high places. It had driven Dyne mad—although he'd tried to hide it, he'd always been afraid of heights, and it had terrified him when I would climb a ship's rigging, or sit at the edge of Vane's plateau with my feet dangling out over emptiness (he'd only dared, despite the stories, mount a dragon once, and he'd been distinctly green when he'd finally gotten off). For me, however, height held no terrors, and the feel of the wind rushing past us somehow made flying with Ruby even better than watching Vane's stately progress through the skies in the days when it had still been a floating city. 

I was too proud to beg the dragons to experience this again, but . . . _I wonder if I could learn the shape-changing spell that they use._ Supposedly, no mortal had ever learned any of the magics wielded by Althena's Guardians, but then I was the only mortal who had ever proven myself more powerful than they. Or could Zophar have . . . ? He had certainly demonstrated the ability to transform his flesh . . . 

It was damnably frustrating not to understand what one's opponent _was_. Even Zophar had to have come from somewhere. I didn't believe that _mind_ could just appear out of the void . . . but that was one of the subjects I had never dared raise when I'd had the demon godling's ear, and now it was too late, unless Lucia or the dragons knew something. 

We were at the edge of the badlands, where the brown land turned to green, when Ruby spotted something else in the sky and turned abruptly, almost unseating me. 

"Hey! Wait up!" The dot my mount was now pursuing, darker blue against the pale blue of the sky, had turned as well, and was heading directly away from us. "Azure, you idiot! _I found him!_ " 

"I think that may be exactly the problem," I murmured—probably inaudible against the rushing wind. I cast a minor speed-enhancing spell on Ruby, who mumbled a thank- you and began pumping her wings hard, pushing herself up and forward. 

"Show her . . . stupid eggling . . ." The words weren't really meant for my ears, although I caught some of them anyway. 

The air grew colder . . . and then suddenly Ruby's wings caught a prodigious wind going in exactly the right direction. As we sailed along it, the dark blue dot on the horizon began to grow, although at first my eyes were watering too much for me to be able to make out many features. As we grew closer, though . . . 

I'd never seen one of the blue dragons in flight before. Spread, the rainbow-gossamer wings looked too fragile to support such a huge creature—she was slender for a dragon, but that didn't exactly make her small. 

"You look better this way than as a human, Azure," I called over the rush of the wind, and saw her shiver, just a little. 

"Damn you, Ruby, you said you weren't going to tell him!" 

"I didn't—he figured it out for himself!" 

Azure growled, but she stopped trying quite so hard to outdistance us. "Galin . . . Ghaleon . . ." she hesitated. 

"Ghaleon," I confirmed. "I apologize for deceiving you, but at the time, I wasn't sure whom I could trust." 

"Ghaleon, then. I'm just . . . I'm glad that you're all right." 

"We'll talk on the ground," said Ruby. "Nall said he'd wait for us outside Vane, after he'd had a look at the situation there, so let's go." 

We circled over into the mountains north of the city, skimming between their snow-capped peaks until something small and almost equally white came fluttering up to meet us: Nall as a "flying cat". 

"Down here," he piped in a ridiculously high-pitched voice. "Come on!" 

We followed him down into a high valley isolated from the rest of the world, not just by mountains, but by a sulphuric-smelling haze. Pools of water were everywhere, some of them steaming, and there was grass on the ground, rather than snow. 

Nall landed first, darting into a hollow in a rocky wall and digging in with all four clawed feet as Ruby and Azure dropped down, their wings churning the air with a turbulence that would have blown Nall's more diminutive form halfway back to Vane if he hadn't taken precautions. Azure returned to her human form immediately as her feet touched ground, but Ruby had to wait until I slid down off her back. 

Nall, also in human form, walked up to me and took a good, long look, hands planted on hips. Then he sighed and tilted his head. 

"I just hope you're willing to be openly on our side this time—that aura-stripping thing gets old really fast." 

"I'm hardly likely to reject any potential ally when I have Zophar after my head," I said. 

The three dragons blanched. 

"Zophar!" Ruby snarled the name. "How—he's supposed to be _dead_!" 

"So am I," I pointed out dryly. 

Nall shook his head. "Althena, with all the forces she could command at the time, wasn't able to do more than imprison Zophar at ruinous cost—why should Lucia and Hiro have been able to do any better? We're lucky to have had eight hundred years' respite." For some reason, the White Dragon had lowered his eyes as he spoke, as though he suddenly couldn't bear to look at me. 

"I think he's still quite weak," I said. "He seems to be working exclusively through others right now, which wasn't his methodology before. If we catch him quickly enough . . ." 

"Except that we don't have a goddess handy to help take him on this time," Azure said grimly. 

"If need be, we can go to the Blue Star and find Lucia . . . but I have more immediate concerns," I said. "Nall, what is the situation in Vane?" 

"Milia's granddaughter Lira is the new Guildmistress," Nall said with a grimace. "Of course, she's all of twelve years old, so Altus is running the show for her. Do you really think he killed Milia? I'd heard they were friends, despite the difference in ages . . ." 

I sighed. "I can't be certain. Altus is working for Zophar, but he may just have taken advantage of the situation to try to get rid of me, rather than being responsible for it himself. When I accused him yesterday, it was partly to keep him talking and partly to see if I could startle some useful information out of him. I couldn't; he's too good. And I take it that he's the one pushing for the imprisonment of my unlucky apprentice." 

"As far as I could tell, yes. Actually, I think he may have been thinking execution at first, but the little Guildmistress threw a fit." Nall grinned. "I could get to like her—she reminds me of Ruby at that age, except smarter." 

"Hey!" 

"She pointed out that no matter what his master might or might not have done, it really wouldn't be good public relations to execute the first beastman member the Guild had had since the massacres," Nall continued more soberly, ignoring Ruby. "Altus had to agree with her. Still, she couldn't convince everyone to release him, either. I managed to get in to speak to him, briefly . . . and you know, Ghaleon, that kid really does believe that you're coming to get him." 

"I deserve that, I suppose," I said into the silence that followed. "Betraying Lunar and the few friends I still had . . . my actions in those days were inexcusable, and I suppose that no one who knows my history will ever be able to trust me fully. However, you could at least remember what I said earlier about potential allies." 

"Really, Nall," Azure added, "you have no manners. Ghaleon, for what it's worth, _I_ trust you. We've been travelling together long enough that I think I know what kind of person you are, and _I_ don't think for a moment that you'd ever really abandon Meloth." 

Now it was my turn to find myself looking somewhere, anywhere, rather than at the person who'd just spoken to me. "You know less of me than you think you do, Azure. Nall is the only one here, other than myself, who remembers all the high points of my rather chequered career at first-hand. You should listen to him." 

Azure snorted. "Don't worry—Nall's told me, at length, what you tried to do eighteen hundred years ago." Then she added, soberly, "I can only imagine the level of pain and fear you must have been trying to endure, back then." 

"Fear?" I began to laugh, but Azure's voice brought me up short. 

"Yes, fear. Fear of losing what you had left to the whims of a goddess you didn't really understand. You loved Dyne, didn't you?" 

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter anymore." 

"And part of the reason you're so prickly is that you don't want people to befriend you—you're too afraid of losing someone else. And now you're angry because you let a stubborn young beastman slip past the first few layers of your defenses." 

"Everyone here understands loss," Nall added soberly. "Do you think I don't still miss Alex and Luna? They were my family . . . just like Dyne was yours. I talked to him a lot afterwards, you know, and if there was one thing he regretted, it was how much he'd hurt you. He blamed himself for not realizing just how much you depended on him. He thought of you as his brother, you know." 

I felt a prickling sensation at the corners of my eyes, and angrily blinked it away before I fully realized what it was. Unshed tears. How long had it been since I'd last been able to cry? 

No, I did remember that. Falling to my knees on a hillside below the Goddess Tower of old on the day that Dyne had given up his powers, hugging my chest to hold in the cries of rage and pain until the tears that seared their paths down my face had gone from clear to cloudy red—adulterated with blood, like those of a member of the Vile Tribe. And when that spasm had spent itself, and I'd lain gasping and exhausted in the grass, I'd done my best to bar my mind against, not just the memory of what had happened inside the Tower that day, but any thought of Dyne at all, for fear that the raw agony would drive me mad. 

I'd thought that giving up the powers of the Dragonmaster would kill my friend, you see, that he'd be subject to the wasting disease that afflicts ordinary mages who somehow lose the power to cast spells. When he'd disappeared a few days later, after handing baby Luna over to his cousins in Burg, I'd assumed he had noticed the signs and was going off alone to die. 

Now I forced myself to look at Azure, and to say the words. "I felt the same way about him. I never knew my parents, so he was the only family I ever had. Even Lemia and Mel were afraid of me on some level, but Dyne . . . Dyne only accepted. And without him, I had nothing, and nothing mattered." 

The Blue Dragon stood there with her mouth slightly open for a moment, then said, simply " . . . Damn." 

The one who had the most interesting expression on his face, however, noted some small part of my mind that wasn't engaged in trying to regain its equilibrium, was Nall, who was frowning guiltily down at the ground. And why was _he_ feeling guilty? 

"Um, guys? This is all very well and good, but don't we still have someone to rescue?" Ruby asked. 

" _I_ have someone to rescue," I corrected. 

" _We_ ," Azure said firmly. "I like the kid too, you know, and he was a lot of help with Irina." 

"So do we sneak into Vane through the Cave of Trials?" Ruby said. 

I shook my head. "The Cave's exit is in the middle of the city. We'd have a dozen Enforcers on us before we even got to the Guild's Headquarters. We're close enough to the city here that I should be able to teleport us in, and one of the entrances to Vane's secret research library is hidden behind a hanging in a hallway on the ground floor of Guild Headquarters. The library itself isn't shielded against teleportation, and there are some sections that are practically disused—we'll just have to choose where to appear carefully." 

Azure blinked. "So that's where you were yesterday morning when Meloth couldn't find you." 

"How are we supposed to get out again, though?" Ruby asked. 

I glanced at the silent figure standing at her side. "I was hoping that Nall could help us with that—if anything, his powers in that area should be greater than mine. I certainly shouldn't risk teleporting us all myself a second time, not in my present condition." Indeed, I wasn't even certain I could have pulled it off in my Magic Emperor days—not for five people. 

"I . . ." The White Dragon frowned deeply. Then he sighed. "Oh, all right. Although I don't think either of us is going to enjoy this expedition. Still, I don't dare go back to Taben's Peak without making sure this Meloth is all right—Irina's promised to kill me if I let him get hurt." 

"You're such a soft touch." Azure was grinning. "We're at your service, Dragonmaster Ghaleon." In response to Nall's glare, she said, "What? I don't remember anyone ever bothering to take that title away from him either, and surely he deserves it if anyone does. Without his courage, Zophar would have taken over Lunar eight hundred years ago, and we wouldn't be having this conversation!" 

"There can't ever be another real Dragonmaster," Nall snapped. "Alex was the last. And even if there weren't other considerations, I'm not about to bestow the title on the man who almost killed him—not even as a courtesy!" 

"And Zaile hasn't approved," Ruby pointed out dubiously. 

Azure waved this concern away. "Oh, that lazybones. Over six hundred years old, and he still can't take human form— mostly because he's too busy sleeping to bother to learn how!" There was something in her eyes that didn't fit her light-hearted tone, though. In fact, it looked to me like she felt some . . . affection . . . for Zaile. 

And why did that thought hurt just a little, like being pricked with a pin? 

"In any case, that title isn't one that I want," I said firmly. "Let it remain the province of your Alex, and those who came before him. I never want to hear it applied to me again—I bore it falsely in Zophar's service for far too long." 

Azure shot me a disgusted look, but Nall . . . appeared to be relieved. _And what were those "other considerations" you mentioned, O White Dragon? To the best of my knowledge, I should be as much eligible to become Dragonmaster as any other mortal inhabitant of Lunar. And why do I have the feeling that it has something to do with whatever is creating the illusion that I'm not really mortal at all?_

_What are you hiding?_


	11. Chapter 11

Midmorning wasn't the best time for sneaking around the bowels of Vane, so we settled in to wait . . . or, more accurately, Azure and I, who couldn't show our faces in the Magic City right now, did, while Ruby fluttered off down the mountain in flying-cat form to keep an eye on the situation below. Nall took a similar form and vanished into the sulphuric steam of the hot springs before I could catch him to ask questions. I swore tiredly and wandered off in search of a place that was neither too hot and humid nor too cold, where I could sit and brood in comfort. 

I found it at the edge of the valley, where the clouds of steam faded into thin mist and sometimes froze against exposed rock faces, building up fantastic shapes like the legendary pixie castles. The base of the boulder I chose as my seat, however, sat half in and half out of one of the cooler hot springs, barely more than lukewarm, but still capable of taking the chill from the stone. 

"So here we are again," I muttered, staring into the water. I wasn't even sure whether I was speaking to my reflection or Dyne's ghost . . . or maybe even Althena's. "I wish someone would explain to me, in short, simple terms, why I always seem to end up with someone's fate balanced across the palm of my hand. Meloth's, Hiro's . . . the Vile Tribe's. A goddess's. Lunar's. I don't remember ever asking for this." 

My groping hand found a pebble, and I flung it, hard, into the water, without receiving so much as a satisfying splash in return. 

"None of us ever do," murmured a thoughtful voice. "I think that Althena . . . or whatever force exists beyond her . . . gives us responsibility according to our capacity to handle it. Our _real_ capacity, not just what we think we're capable of." Azure flopped down beside me, lying on her back on the warm stone and looking up at me. "Mmm. This is nice." 

I snorted. "So you're saying that Althena thinks I'm capable of carrying the fate of the world on my shoulders?" 

"Well, why not? You've done it twice already." 

"Badly," I pointed out. 

"Badly the first time, but I think you did okay the second time, don't you? We all make mistakes." 

"Now you sound like one of the pixies." 

"Who are very wise creatures in their own way . . . Did you know that the ones in your garden seem to be the last left on Lunar? Even if you've never done anything else right, at least you've saved them." 

"A drop of water in an ocean of blood." 

"Oh, stop that. Have you always been this gloomy?" 

"Perhaps I'm just so tired that I've forgotten how to be charming." An errant cold breeze ruffled my hair. "Twice now, I've felt my lifeforce ebbing away and assumed that it was the end . . . and twice I've been dragged back to Lunar as though Althena feels I've left something unfinished. Why me? Why not Dyne, or Nall's friend Alex? They were both far better men than I." 

Azure's hand closed, quite unexpectedly, around mine. "You know, I'd almost swear that you're enjoying this self- flagellation," she said in an acid tone that didn't match the warmth of her grip. "Ghaleon, you may be the greatest mage in Lunar's history, but no matter what you tried to do eighteen hundred years ago, you're still a man, not a god. Even if you'd managed to absorb Althena's power, that wouldn't have changed in any meaningful way. Why you? Well, why does there have to be a reason? Sometimes things just happen. If you think Dyne should be here instead of you, then all you can do is try to follow his example, and try to do what you think he would have considered right." 

"The fact that there is no reason for a thing never seems to stop people from looking for one," I said. "I think . . . perhaps we need reasons." 

Azure chuckled. "Because the universe would disintegrate into chaos without them?" 

The corners of my mouth quirked upwards. "Something like that." 

"You know, you're quite handsome when you smile like that, instead of half-sneering the way you usually do." I must have been gaping like a fish, because she added, "Hasn't anyone ever told you that you're good-looking before?" 

"Not to my face," I said, then, remembering my first meeting with Mel de Alkirk, "or at least not in such a way that I actually believed them." 

"Funny, I would have thought you'd have had half the female students in Vane chasing after you, in your day . . . or did that icier-than-thou attitude of yours scare them all off?" 

"Possibly," I admitted. "I certainly didn't encourage them." 

"Not even a little?" 

I shrugged. "Back then, I thought I knew what I wanted, and a wife and a family, or even just a lover, wasn't a part of that." 

Azure squeezed my hand gently. "And now?" 

"Now? You mean, what would I do if Zophar just went away and everyone on Lunar suddenly developed selective amnesia about my past? I don't know. Go back to Vane, maybe. I was almost happy there, once, a very long time ago." 

"And that girlfriend you didn't want before?" 

"I doubt I could find one who would have me." 

"Pessimist." 

"Often," I admitted. 

"Always," Azure corrected. "You know, I almost wish . . . ah, never mind. Why do you have to remind me so much of Zaile, anyway?" That was a question I couldn't answer, and she clearly knew it, because she sighed and added, "Look, if we're going to be up all night, we should probably get some sleep." 

"I just woke up a few hours ago, after sleeping nearly an entire day away," I pointed out, amused, as she released my hand. 

"Fine, but I hope you don't mind . . . if I use you as a pillow," she squeaked, having gone from human form to the flying-cat shape of an immature dragon in mid-sentence. I watched, amused—and perhaps a shade _be_ mused—as she climbed daintily into my lap and curled up there. After a moment, I found myself stroking her fuzzy coat—so unlike the scales of her mature form—and scratching gently behind her ears, as though she really were a cat. "Mrr . . . don' stop . . . such good hands . . ." she muttered sleepily. "C'l'd . . . get used . . . t'this . . ." The words faded into sounds that would probably cause her to spit fire into my face if I called them snores . . . even though, to my mind, there was no better name for them. 

I continued to stroke her absently as the sun followed its slow course above my head, allowing myself, for a few short hours, to entertain brief, bright daydreams that I would have sworn were beneath me. A wife . . . Children . . . I hadn't been quite truthful, really, when I'd said that Dyne had been the only person who had ever accepted me. Mia, and even Jessica, when they'd both been very small, had treated me like a beloved uncle. Back then, I'd been too young—and too wrapped up in my own affairs—to appreciate that, and I'd rebuffed them over and over again, until they'd started to treat me with more distance and dignity. I regretted that now. 

A world at peace. It was difficult to imagine, for I'd never truly lived in one. Such a world wouldn't need great mages, or Dragonmasters . . . wouldn't need heroes, and certainly wouldn't need villains. Which left me . . . where, exactly? 

I snorted softly and continued to stroke Azure's back. 

"Well, isn't this cute." As the sky turned orange in anticipation of the end of the day, Nall emerged from the mists with Ruby on his shoulder and a basket in one hand. "I brought supper." 

Azure's nose twitched. Then her eyes opened, and she rose to her feet to stretch—again, very much as a cat would, forequarters first, then hind. "Is that fish I smell?" 

"Best quality smoked salmon," Nall said. "I took a little detour to Meribia—I mean, what's the use of having the White Dragon Wings if I can't use them, right?" 

Fortunately, he'd also thought to bring bread and cheese and some apples—I do like fish, but not nearly as much as the dragons seem to, so I let them fight over it. Azure had something of a taste for fruit, though . . . or perhaps she was merely faking it for my benefit, because I more than once found myself fighting back a smile as I watched her barely-cat-sized self wrestling with an apple as big as her head. 

"No change in what's going on in Vane," Ruby, now in human form, reported as she dabbed her lips daintily with a napkin. "That kid's damn lucky that he's got the little Guildmistress on his side. If she hadn't taken an interest, I suspect Altus might have tried to disappear him, but under the circumstances, he doesn't dare try." 

"Did you warn Meloth we were coming?" Azure asked, still fighting her apple. 

"I didn't have to—the kid's not stupid. He figured out that something was going on the moment he spotted me, and connecting it with our ex-Magic-Emperor here didn't exactly take much brainpower, either. He'll be ready." 

Azure was leaving little claw-holes in the unfortunate apple she had chosen, but she just couldn't seem to sink her teeth into it—it appeared to have something to do with the shape of her jaw in her current form. I reached out and gripped the red fruit between my thumb and forefinger, halting its mad rotation for a moment. 

"Here, let me slice that for you," I said. 

"Would you? Thanks." 

"You're awfully calm," Nall muttered. 

I snorted. "And why shouldn't I be? Dying again doesn't really hold any terrors for me, and once you're no longer afraid of that, what's left? If something goes wrong, I think that Azure, at least, will finish what I've started this time." 

Nall gave me a very strange look. I couldn't read it at all, which was an odd experience for me. But it was Azure who stretched out one paw to touch my hand. 

"Stop talking so casually about dying. I'd miss you, you know, and so would Meloth." 

"I'm not saying that I intend to go looking for death," I said, presenting her with her first slice of apple. "Dying hurts, and I don't particularly enjoy pain. There's a difference between not being afraid of something, and trying to seek it out." 

"Mmph. Good," said the Blue Dragon around a mouthful of fruit. I cut her another slice. 

Ruby giggled. "You know, if you two were the same size right now, anyone seeing this would think Azure was your girlfriend." 

" _Ruby!_ " 

"Hush," I said. "She's just teasing you." 

But Azure's hackles were well and thoroughly raised. "How dare you accuse me of violating Althena's law that way?" she spat, and it was only her tiny, high-pitched voice that made it sound even a little comical. 

"That _was_ a bit much, Ruby," Nall said. 

The Red Dragon pouted. "Damn it, you're no fun— any of you." Then she turned to me, and added, "I've got to figure out how to make you blush. With that fair skin of yours, it must be quite a sight." 

"If you succeed, you'll be the first," I said. "I may not be physically capable of it, like some members of the Vile Tribe. Mel certainly tried hard enough, for a while." Finishing with the apple, I fanned the slices out neatly in front of Azure and licked the juice from my fingers. The light in the valley now came more from the Blue Star than from the sun, which was nearly invisible behind the mountains, although the western sky was still flaming gaudily red. For a moment, the only sound was Azure crunching apple slices. 

"It's funny," Nall said to his hands. "I certainly never expected to ever be sitting here like this with _you_ , of all people. Even when you and I and Alex and Luna travelled from Vane to the White Dragon Cave together, all those years ago, you held yourself apart—actually, you acted downright antisocial." 

I looked away—we seemed to be refusing to meet each other's eyes a lot, as we felt our way through this awkward new relationship. "I didn't want to talk about Dyne, and Alex was so fascinated by him that I doubted I would be able to keep him from raising the topic. At the time, my wounds were still too raw . . . and I think I may have been afraid that thinking too much about my friend would make me lose my resolve." I groped for a change of subject, found one. "What did Azure mean when she said that Ruby was accusing her of violating Althena's Law?" It was something I was genuinely curious about, and it had nothing to do with me. 

"We're forbidden to have . . . romantic relationships with members of other species," Nall said, still talking to his hands. "Luna never really explained why, but I gather that, a long time ago, on the Blue Star, someone of mixed blood caused so much trouble that she felt it had to be kept from happening again, even if she had to make an unfair rule to do it. It's one of only two things we're not permitted to do." 

"And the other?" 

Azure winced visibly as I asked the question. 

"The study of forms of magic other than our own," Nall replied, and I understood why Azure looked so unhappy. 

"Zaile taught me some stuff before I found out it was forbidden," she said, swallowing the last of her apple. "He grew up in Vane, so it would have been impossible to keep him from learning at least something." 

" _Zaile_ taught you?" Nall said harshly. "I didn't know that. It sounds like the Black Dragon and I are going to have to have a talk once this is over." 

Azure gave him a wounded look, but it was Ruby who said, "And he won't listen to you any more than he ever does. You know that, to him, the fact that you're the oldest of us, and the only one who remembers Althena, doesn't give you any authority." 

"He's lucky that he sleeps all the time," Nall muttered, then deliberately turned the topic of the conversation to the hundred and one trials of running an orphanage. Azure crawled into my lap again, and we both half-listened as we waited for the population of Vane to crawl into bed. 

"It's about time," I said at length. The Blue Star was directly over our heads now, and I made it out to be about midnight. As I stood, Azure fluttered up from my lap to my shoulder, for all the world like one of the pixies in my garden. "Once we're inside, follow me and say as little as possible," I added. "There's no need to take risks by making unnecessary noise. Azure, are you going to stay in that form?" 

"I thought it might be useful for scouting around," the Blue Dragon replied. 

I sighed, and kept to myself the thought that, in that case, it would have made more sense for Ruby to be the flying cat—the Red Dragon's human form would be useless in a physical fight, and I already knew that Azure really was good with her shortswords. "Does anyone else have anything to say? If not, let's go." 

We appeared in the dusty, philosophy-filled corner of the vaults that I'd lately used as a reading refuge. Nall grimaced and had to pinch his nose shut on a sneeze as our arrival stirred up the topmost layers of what was on the floor. There were no lights nearby, which was fortunate because we were going to have to conceal our presence by old-fashioned stealth—in this place, inhabited only by master mages, magical concealment would be anything but. 

We ghosted through the vaults, up the stairway that led into Guild Headquarters, along a hallway, and halfway down another flight of stairs, where I gestured for the others to stop so that I could listen. Yes, the old prison was still guarded—one guard only, I thought, shifting his weight periodically from one foot to the other and grumbling about nothing in particular. But there were other voices, too. 

" . . . my brother wasn't very happy, as you can imagine," Meloth was saying. 

Someone giggled—a girl? "Oh, that's terrible! You . . ." The words disintegrated into another burst of laughter. 

The guard—I assumed it was the guard—cleared his throat. "Lady Lira, it's almost time for my shift change . . ." 

Thoughts flashed rapidly through my head. Shift change—that was bad. There was nowhere for us to hide from the replacement guard unless we pulled out completely, so we either had to rescue Meloth _now_ , or be prepared to fight for him. But if that was Lira Ausa down there with my fool apprentice . . . she might make a hostage . . . even an ally? 

I was already in motion, breathing the keyword of a sleep spell and leaping quickly down the stairs to ease the stunned guard to the floor. 

The first cell was empty. Outside the second, a blonde girl crouched, holding hands with Meloth, who was leaning up against the bars. 

"Master!" the young beastman said with both pleasure and a wounding amount of surprise. "I wasn't sure you'd come so soon." 

"Despite what some people may say of me, I take my responsibilities seriously, boy." I touched the lock of the cell with my master's ring, and it clicked open—thanks be to Althena that there's no way to _un_ key a spell like that from someone, or I'd have had to blow the door off its hinges. "We can't afford to stay here—move." We had to get out of the prison before anyone could initiate a teleport. 

Meloth was just stepping out into the narrow passage between the cells when I felt a hand on my arm. I turned and discovered that the person accosting me was small and blonde. 

"Lord Ghaleon." 

"Lady Guildmistress," I replied with the same grave courtesy with which she had spoken to me—she deserved that much. "Please speak quickly. If a guard should appear now and see us, I might have to kill him." 

She jerked her chin up. "Not if I order him to quietly lock himself in one of the cells." It was more than half bravado, but I let it pass. "Please, I need . . ." 

"Lira, maybe this isn't the best time," Meloth said from behind me. 

"No, Mel, I need to do this in person, not through you. Lord Ghaleon. Premier Altus has been acting erratically since my grandmother's death, and I believe he is a danger to Vane and the Guild. I need him removed." 

My eyebrows rose. "That is . . . an audacious suggestion for the Guildmistress to make to her predecessor's supposed murderer . . . and not one that we should discuss here. Nall, the girl will be coming with us temporarily." 

"I don't know if that's a good idea," the White Dragon said. 

"I think we need to take the chance," I replied. 

I grabbed for the girl's shoulder, to hurry her along, but Meloth interposed himself with a cheeky grin and a wink, and began to guide her in the direction of the stairs. 

I suppose it was inevitable that Ruby, who was in the lead, would step off the topmost step and practically into the arms of the relief guard I'd been worrying about. Immediately, I whipped out my sword . . . and aimed the point at the little Guildmistress' throat. 

"Breathe a single sound, and she dies," I snapped. The guard's eyes went wide, and he nodded silently. Meloth gave me a hurt look, no doubt thinking that I'd betrayed him, but Lira kept her shoulders steady and her head high. "Ruby, Nall, move out of my way." The two dragons stepped past the frozen guard. My hand came up, and I spoke the keyword of the same sleep spell I'd used on his counterpart downstairs. Fortunately, Nall had the presence of mind to catch the guard as he fell. 

I lowered my sword, then whisked it back into its scabbard. "Next time, stay behind me," I told the two dragons. "If I'd had a clear line of sight to him, I wouldn't have had to try such a dangerous trick. Lady Lira, I trust you aren't hurt? . . . Good. Ruby, I'm going to have to ask you to haul our slumbering friend downstairs. Leave him with the other one. With luck, no one should find him before morning. When you're done, follow us out. Nall, if you would . . ." 

The White Dragon shot Ruby a distinctly unhappy look. Then he narrowed his eyes in concentration, the scene lurched, and we were . . . elsewhere. 

To my surprise, Nall had chosen to take us, not back to the hot springs valley or to his own stronghold at Taben's Peak, but to a familiar garden. I shot him a sharp glance as Meloth and Lira stared around in surprise. 

Nall shrugged irritably. "I noticed years ago that you'd protected this place so well that Althena Herself probably couldn't see what's going on in here, much less enter it against your will, so I figured the kids would be safe here while you talk about the Guildmistress' little proposal. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to find Ruby." 

He vanished before I could stop him. "Barren Earth," I muttered. 

"Oh! You're back! And Azure's with you, and . . ." 

"Hush, little one," I said. "There's no need to wake the others. This is Meloth, my apprentice, and his friend Lira." It was always best to keep relationships simple when talking to pixies, even one so perspicacious as my little part-time alarm clock. 

The young Guildmistress was staring at the tiny creature hovering in the air in front of me. "That's a pixie. Then this is the refuge you're said to have created for them . . . It's beautiful." 

I dipped my head. "I think you for the compliment . . . but I believe we have other matters to discuss." 

"Here you go again," Azure squeaked from where she sat on my shoulder, and Lira's eyes grew even rounder. "Always so damned gloomy . . ." 

"A . . . talking cat?" 

Azure laughed and jumped down from my shoulder. "Don't say that to Ruby if you see her in this shape—she'll try to singe your nose off. Here, let me introduce myself properly," she said, returning to her human form in midair and somehow managing to keep her balance when her feet hit the ground. "I am Azure, the Blue Dragon of Althena. Pleased to meet you." 

"If you faint, boy, I'm leaving you where you lie," I warned, and Meloth shut his mouth and swallowed. 

"Just ignore him when he says something like that," Azure advised Lira. "For some reason, Ghaleon seems intent on living down to all the worst parts of that horrible reputation of his." 

Lira shook her head, reminding me, in that moment, very strongly of her ancestress Mia. "I don't think so," she said, softly but firmly. "He left two sleeping guards behind him where he could have left corpses. He came and rescued Mel when he didn't really have to. The man Altus described to me—the man who shot Vane down from the sky—wouldn't have done either of those things. But the man Mel told me about might have." 

I turned away. "Meloth knows me less well than he thinks he does, or he would never have gotten himself jailed in the first place." 

The young beastman went red. "Well, then, I'm sorry for caring . . . but if you hadn't really been . . . who Altus said you were . . . you might have been in trouble, and I owe you so much . . ." 

"Mel, he knows," Azure said. "Right now, I'm more curious about what he and Lira have to say to each other." 

"It has to do with the by-laws of the Magic Guild," I said. "The Guild Premier is supposed to be the most powerful master mage in the Guild. If there is some doubt as to who is the rightful holder of the title, there's a provision for it to be decided by magical combat among the candidates, although to my knowledge it's never actually been invoked before. Lira is asking me to displace Altus . . . although it could be argued that I'm already the legitimate holder of the title, as I never resigned it and, to my knowledge, was never dismissed. _However._ Altus is working for Zophar. Fighting him may result in a premature confrontation with his master. The children are going to have to convince me that it's worth the risk." 

"Zophar is—" 

"—no more ancient history than I am, unfortunately," I completed Meloth's sentence. 

Lira digested this, then said, "There is this. Altus intends to send people out to scour Lunar for you—not just Guild Enforcers, either. He plans to offer a general reward. While I don't doubt your ability to deal with any dozen ordinary people who attack you, you're probably going to have to kill some of them, and they're definitely going to get in the way and distract you from more important business." 

I made a small gesture, conceding the point. _My, this child is going to make a formidable Guildmistress one day._ "There is also the question of whether the Guild will accept an accused murderer as Premier—and, more importantly, as your regent." 

"It's better than having Altus in that position, don't you think? That man . . ." Lira shuddered. "I used to like him, but lately, he makes my skin crawl. Anyway, if we're in charge, we can arrange a fair trial to clear your name, right?" 

I chuckled. "And what if it turns out that I _am_ the one who killed your mother?" 

The young Guildmistress frowned it me. "Meloth warned me that you'd probably try to do this. All I can say is that, according to what I've seen of you so far, you may be a cold-blooded killer, but you're not a _casual_ one—you don't murder people for no reason. And the histories I spent most of the afternoon reading say the same thing, if you pay proper attention. In fact, there are a couple of places where it looks like you bent over backwards so as _not_ to kill people, even when they were dangerous to you. Lemia Ausa, for instance—if you'd killed her instead of just locking her up, Xenobia might never have been found out." 

Somehow, I managed to hide the wince. "Lemia was . . . a friend." 

"And truly evil people don't have friends." 

I shook my head. "You're naive." 

"Yes, I probably am," Lira said forthrightly. "I mean, I'm only twelve years old. Grandmother was doing her best to train me for this—to be Guildmistress—but I know I'm not really ready for it yet. There was so much I still needed to learn from her . . ." The girl's shoulders began to sag, until she noticed and squared them up again. "That's another reason I want you as Premier, and not Altus. Altus doesn't even teach _magic_ very well, and when I ask him why he's making some decision or other as my regent, he refuses to tell me. Mel says that you know how to teach. The Guild records say you were a capable Premier. Lord Ghaleon, I _need_ you." 

"Hmph. Are you done?" I asked, and, upon receiving her nod, said, "I repeat: you're naive. The Guild is not going to be happy if I'm set at its head—the only thing that will keep the other mages in line at first is fear of my magic. However, it still makes a much better ally than it does an enemy—and you were right when you said that I don't have time to deal with hundreds of random people being out looking for me. I need to work on figuring out how to handle Zophar, not on playing children's games with his minions. Unfortunately, that also means that I'm not going to have all that much time to devote to the Guild's administrative business. You're going to be left to make most of the decisions on your own, unless I catch you doing something that's obviously stupid." 

"But you'll do it," Lira said firmly. 

"Yes, I will." 

I watched amusedly as she curtseyed. "Thank you, Lord Ghaleon." Then the miniature-adult-Guildmistress vanished, and Lira let out a whoop and hugged Meloth. 

"See? I told you he would!" My apprentice was grinning fit to burst. 

I sighed and went to the back wall, where I opened a door much like the one that led up to my rooms. "There are beds of a sort upstairs," I told the two children. "Go get some rest. We're going to have a busy morning." 

"You mean we're not sneaking back into Vane right now?" Meloth asked. 

"We're not _sneaking_ back into Vane at all," I said. "I want my confrontation with Altus to be as public as possible—it reduces the chances that he'll try anything stupid, _and_ it gives the Guild more reason to trust me." A week ago, I wouldn't have bothered to explain, but if I was reading the signs correctly, Meloth was going to get himself dragged into Guild politics whether he liked it or not, and I was going to have to teach him a bit more than magecraft from now on. 

"Oh. Well, um, Lira . . ." Meloth clumsily offered the young Guildmistress his arm, and blushed slightly when she took it. 

A weight settled on my shoulder, and a squeaky voice said, "Are you sure it's safe to leave those two alone together?" Azure, in her flying-cat form. 

I chuckled. "For now, yes. Meloth's still at the bashful stage—it's going to be weeks before he can even bring himself to kiss her, if I'm not mistaken. But if you're worried, you could always go with them." 

"I half expected you to ask me why you should worry . . . but I guess you had the opportunity to watch this sort of thing happen between Guild apprentices every now and then, didn't you?" 

"Actually, I was thinking of Mel de Alkirk," I said, shaking my head at the memories. "Oh, that was quite a spectacle—the big, tough pirate suddenly discovering that he'd fallen in love." How Dyne and I had laughed when he'd come to the rest of us begging for advice . . . He'd been lucky that Lemia had been willing to take him seriously and help out. "If you want a bed to yourself, though, you really should go up with them." 

"Nuh-uh. I'm curious to see where you live." 

My eyebrows rose. "Why?" 

"Because I just am!" Blue Dragons, I discovered, blush purple. "I want to know more about you. You're one of the most interesting people I've ever met, and you never talk about yourself." 

"Curl up on my pillow then—I don't really care." I closed the door through which the children had disappeared with a casual gesture, and opened the one to my own rooms. 

Azure somehow managed to stay on my shoulder as I climbed the stairs, then kicked my boots off and unfastened my swordbelt and draped it over the rack by the door. 

"This isn't quite what I'd expected," she said, peering around the empty foyer. 

"I only renovated the place—I didn't design it, and since my understanding of a lot of the mechanisms is imperfect, I didn't want to mess with it too much," I said, striding along the hallway to the bedroom. "Congratulations, by the way—you're the only person I've ever let in here." 

"That isn't quite what I meant. I mean, it isn't very . . . homey." 

"It was less a home than a refuge from Pentagulia and Zophar," I explained as the door slid aside. "The only place on Lunar where I could be reasonably certain I wasn't being watched." 

She fluttered off my shoulder as I began unfastening my armour, preparing to drape it and the attached cape over the stand at the foot of my bed. She poked into the closet and the bathroom, pawed delicately at a stack of books I'd left beside the bed eight hundred years ago, and finished up by hovering in front of the lute propped in a corner. 

"I didn't know you played." 

"It's been a while since I had the leisure," I admitted. Indeed, I couldn't remember the last time I had touched the smooth rosewood of the instrument—not since months before my second death, most likely. It had to be horribly out of tune. 

She picked it up and carried it over to the bed. It was almost too heavy for her—I could see her wings straining—but somehow she managed to keep it from dragging on the floor. 

"Please? Just one song?" 

" . . . All right." I don't know why I said it—the sensible thing would have been to go straight to bed—but I found myself sitting on the edge of the mattress, lightly touching the strings of the lute and wincing at the dissonances they produced as I adjusted them. Finally I had it just right, and settled the instrument against my shoulder. 

I let my hands find their own path over the strings, and it wasn't until I was halfway through the song that I realized what I was playing. My mouth curved into a bittersweet smile. 

"I don't think I've ever heard that before," Azure said as the last notes faded into silence. 

"Dyne wrote it. A very long time ago." When the world had been young and anything had been possible . . . "It was a sort of . . . courtship gift . . . for Althena, from before he set out to become Dragonmaster." 

"She must have liked it. It's a beautiful piece of music." 

"She loved it. It was one of the few memories of her past that she retained into her last mortal incarnation." I set the lute gently aside. "And now, I really would like to sleep." 

But inevitably, I found myself lying awake, staring at the darkened ceiling, as Azure, curled up beside me, gently snored. 

_What am I doing?_

I wasn't even sure what I was asking myself about—my promise to take back the position of Guild Premier? The dragon lying in my bed? 

_Tell me, Dyne, am I doing the right thing?_

It was fortunate that I didn't expect a reply, because I didn't receive one.


	12. Chapter 12

Having Azure so cooperative made our return to Vane much easier—there's nothing quite like landing in the middle of a city on dragonback to get the attention of the people in charge. Altus was charging down the front steps of Guild Headquarters straight at us before Meloth had even finished helping Lira dismount (or getting in her way—I wasn't really sure which). 

The blond Premier slowed down a bit as he got closer to us—apparently it had just occurred to him that running, especially while wearing robes, isn't very dignified. "Lady Lira, you're safe! We'd heard that you'd been kidnapped." 

"On the contrary," Lira said calmly, "I went with these people of my own free will." Meloth, I noted with amusement, had her hand firmly clutched in his, and didn't seem likely to let go anytime soon. 

Altus was clearly trying to figure out how to get her away from us. I wasn't going to give him a chance. "Premier Altus." 

"Master Galin, wasn't it?" 

I smiled thinly. "Ghaleon." There was a sharp sound of indrawn breath from the crowd around us—we'd accumulated several dozen observers by now, both townspeople surrounding us at a respectful distance on the ground and mages watching from the windows of the Guild Headquarters. "But enough of these games. As a master mage of the Guild—" I held up my hand to display my ring, with its glowing, incised crest, and detected the faintest wince in Altus. If I had been him, I would have been regretting returning the thing to me, too. "—I hereby challenge your right to the position of Premier." 

Altus licked his lips. He only had two options—yield, or fight—and he knew it. "I accept your challenge." 

"Good. Then there's no point in wasting time. Shall we?" 

The Guild by-laws prescribed the procedure for our challenge in excruciating detail. With half the population of Vane trailing behind us, we walked over to the statue of Althena which stood in a semi-private glade to the immediate west of Guild Headquarters. Once there, I unbuckled my sword belt and handed it to Azure, who had resumed her human form— technically, it should have gone to Meloth, but he was still glued to Lira, and I didn't have the heart to separate them. 

Altus and I stripped off our master's rings and placed them together in a hollow in the statue's pedestal. Immediately, an energy field about ten feet in diameter sprang up around us. I tested it with a spell, and nodded in satisfaction—it really was strong enough to protect the spectators from anything short of a Grindery-scale blast. 

"Any last words . . . Lord Ghaleon?" But his tone and strategically placed pause weren't enough to keep me from noticing the look in his eyes. Altus was afraid. 

"Surrender, and I'll spare your life," I said evenly. "Or perhaps you would prefer that I didn't—at least that way, you'd be able to rejoin your brother." 

Red, I decided, really wasn't Altus' colour. His angry flush clashed with the blue streak under his eye as he barked out a keyword unfamiliar to me—an earth spell of some sort, I discovered as I dodged a spike of stone erupting from the ground underneath me. Very well. 

I spoke a keyword of my own, and ice lanced down from the sky. Altus countered with fire. In the confined space that we inhabited, the result was, inevitably, cold fog—and a lot of cursing on my opponent's part, as he was splashed with icy water. 

I could have won the fight almost immediately, at that point, by attacking him physically . . . but that would, in a sense, have been cheating. This was supposed to be a battle of magic and will, and using my greater strength to end it wouldn't have sat well with the rest of the Guild, although it wasn't specifically forbidden by the rules. 

Wind buffeted the fog, but couldn't blow it away— Altus' tactical understanding of what it meant to be in a sealed space like this, where only air could pass in and out, and that only at a gentle pace, was poor. Good. 

Altus barked another keyword, I spoke one of my own, and our wills clashed in the form of lightning. I sighed. Maybe punching him out wasn't such a bad idea after all—if we both kept on using these same spells, this was going to turn into an endurance test, and I wasn't sure which one of us that favoured, really . . . but casting something more powerful in such a confined space . . . 

My next spell wasn't an attack at all, but a casting of Chaos Shield, which would partially protect me from what I intended to unleash next. Through the mists, I saw Altus frown, probably confused because he didn't recognize the spell and couldn't perceive its effects—I'd developed it myself, and destroyed all my notes after I'd perfected it. He got the point when he threw another earth spell at me and my spell blocked it, but by then it was too late for him. 

I barked two keywords in quick succession—Meteor Shower and Hellwave. I'd never cast the two in combination before, and wasn't sure what they would do, but I had the feeling it would be spectacular. 

I wasn't disappointed. 

The visual manifestation was rather like an enraged Aura Borealis—glowing waves of energy pouring down on us from above with immense force. My Chaos Shield held only for a split second before breaking, and even though I wasn't at the center of it and have a high resistance to spells in general, I was driven to my knees. 

Altus, unbuffered and at the center of the spell's effect, never had a chance. It left him sprawled on the ground with his robe gently smoking. Carefully, I rose to my feet, walked over to him, and warily prodded him in the ribs to make certain that he wasn't shamming in the hope of hitting me with a close-range attack before bending down to check his pulse. _Alive._ I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, but the rules forbade my . . . making certain . . . of a helpless opponent, even if I could have brought myself to do so. 

I went to the statue and scooped up our rings, sliding my own back onto my finger and dropping Altus' on his prone body as the protective energy field faded. 

The crowd sighed as the mists cleared and they saw me standing there. Meloth, Azure, and Lira were a bit less restrained, crowding around me. 

"Master, what was that last spell? I couldn't see very clearly, but it looked . . ." Meloth waved his hands expressively. 

"I'll tell you when I think of a name for it," I said amusedly, knowing that that would only come after I'd diagrammed the thing out, studied it, and determined whether it had a specific individual keyword of its own or could only be cast as a combination of its parent spells . . . all of which would require leisure that I didn't really have right now. "Lady Lira, would you please call a couple of Enforcers over? I want Altus in one of those jail cells before he regains consciousness, so that he can't disappear before I can question him." Azure handed me my swordbelt, and I cinched it firmly around my waist, both amused and disturbed to discover how the weight at my side made me relax just a little. Would I ever be completely happy again without a weapon under my hand? 

How Dyne would have laughed. I'd been the one who had always claimed that magic was superior to physical weapons, even when he'd been teaching me the sword, but now . . . 

"He isn't dead, then?" Lira asked, interrupting my reverie. 

I shook my head. "Apparently you've been pursuing your education in the combat arts with less than enthusiasm, or you would know just how difficult it is to kill a mage in a spell battle." 

"Seems a bit harsh, to lock up a man who's half dead," said a gravelly voice from somewhere off to my left. A moment later, old Ludus stumped forward out of the crowd. 

"If he didn't know how to teleport, I'd send him home and put a guard on the door," I replied, "but it's imperative that I have a chance to talk to him. If you think he should be sent a healer, or other creature comforts, then by all means do so." 

"Then you really do believe he was responsible for Lady Milia's death." Ludus struck the ground with his cane to punctuate the sentence. 

Again, I made the most honest reply that I dared. "That's one of the things that I want to determine. He was certainly quick to take advantage of the situation, but that in itself does not constitute evidence for murder." 

"So you're willing to entertain the notion that he's innocent?" 

I shrugged. "Of that particular crime, yes. As for the other things I suspect . . . perhaps they had best wait until I can question him under a truth spell and before witnesses, as they are rather . . . outrageous." 

Ludus grunted. "Well, that's better than I'd expected, anyway. _He_ certainly wasn't willing to be told that what he had on you didn't even amount to circumstantial evidence. In your place, I might not have given anyone my right name, either . . . though I doubt I'd have done half the stuff you did to make it necessary to hide who I was in the first place." 

"The problem with having too much power is that one's youthful follies can get somewhat out of hand," I admitted with a wry smile. 

"'Youthful follies,' the man says. You look younger than Altus does." 

"Not intentionally," I said in my driest tone of voice. 

"Ha!" It was more of a bark than a laugh. "I may get to like you yet, Premier Ghaleon." 

My smile thinned. "Best remember, before you do, that I am a very practiced liar." Lira had finally gotten a couple of Enforcers to move Altus. I watched as they checked his pulse to confirm his condition, and began to carry the man inside. 

"The presence of a Dragon of Althena beside you isn't a lie," Ludus pointed out, just as Azure punched me in the biceps. 

"Stop that," the Blue Dragon said. "It's depressing." 

"I think he practices 'depressing' in front of mirrors, Azure. 'Gloating', too—you haven't seen that one yet, but he does it really well. Yii!" Ruby pitched out of the crowd and nearly landed on my feet before Nall, coming up behind her, had a chance to grab her arm. 

"You're just sore because he asked _you_ to stay behind and deal with that guard," Azure said, grinning. 

Nall didn't seem to find any of this at all amusing. "Can we go inside before this turns into a circus?" 

"Too late," I observed, since we still had a crowd of people watching us. 

Interestingly, it was Ludus who came to our rescue. "Okay, people, the show's over, and Premier Ghaleon has to get right on all the duties that Altus has been neglecting, so let us back into the damned building." 

The crowd murmured, slowly parting to create a narrow path for us. It widened as I took a couple of strides in the direction of the Guild Headquarters' entrance, making it clear that I was going to stop for nothing and no one. Behind me, the others—Lira, Meloth, the three dragons, and Ludus—followed single-file. 

I didn't stop until we were all inside with the door closed behind us. Not that we weren't being stared at even here— heads were sticking out of classrooms to have a look—but there was an item of business that I wanted to conclude before leaving the hallway. 

"Meloth," I said. 

"Yes, Master?" 

"The Premier's office is upstairs. Have it cleared out— everything that can be moved is to be taken elsewhere. I want Altus' papers sorted according to whether they're personal, research, or Guild business, and the furniture and walls checked for secret compartments other than the wall safe behind the painting. If he kept any journal or other personal records, I want them brought to me. Whoever does the work is to be wary for traps, both magical and physical ones. Do you understand?" That would give the rumor mill plenty to chew over—enough that I might have a chance of doing other things in at least semi- secrecy. 

Meloth bobbed his head. "I'll get right on it." 

"Very well. Be certain to tell people that you're acting on my behalf, or you may have a hard time getting help, and you're not a good enough mage yet to move that desk by yourself. In the meanwhile . . . Lady Lira? Do you object if I conduct my business from the Guildmistress' office?" 

The girl barely hesitated. "It's at your disposal." Again that flowery, adult phrasing. 

"Good." I brushed past her and opened the door. The room on the other side looked very much as it had when I'd spoken with Milia . . . had it only been three days ago? The events since had arrived so fast and furiously that it seemed as though it should have been longer. 

The chair behind the desk, with its curving form, couldn't be used by someone wearing a sword, much to my annoyance. I ended up unbuckling my belt again and propping the weapon against the desk before I could sit down. Lira and Ludus took the other two chairs in the room, Nall closed the door and found a place against a bookshelf to my left, with Ruby standing uncertainly beside him, and Azure . . . 

"At times like this, it's easier to be a flying cat," the Blue Dragon of Althena announced, and a moment later, she had fluttered across the room to drape herself over my shoulder. "So what do we do now?" 

"Find a way to take the fight to Zophar," Nall said grimly. 

"If you have any idea as to how to go about that in a useful way, I'd like to hear it," I said. 

"Wait a minute." Lira half-rose from her chair. " _Zophar?_ I thought . . . I mean, I'd read that there was a demon by that name, eight hundred years ago, and that you came back to life to fight him, but . . . it just sounds so much like a fairytale!" 

"That's right, you don't know yet," said Azure. "I think we'd all forgotten that the knowledge of Zophar's return was pretty much confined to the four of us." 

"There are a few bits that you three don't know either," I said. "We didn't really talk much, yesterday, about the events leading up to Meloth's capture. I think that perhaps we should do so now." 

I told them, briefly, what I had seen—and, especially, what I had heard—in the vaults below the city. 

"'He has no idea what he himself is capable of,'" Azure quoted softly when I was done. "Ghaleon, it sounds almost like he's afraid of you." 

I frowned. "Yes, and it frustrates me that I don't know _why_. Last time, he was defeated by Lucia's power, and the power of humanity . . . and my deceit, which kept him from dealing with those threats before his other opponents became strong enough to challenge him. I didn't fight him, I _tricked_ him, and I was only able to do that because he let me get close to him. It won't happen again." 

"'The power of humanity'," Azure quoted again. "Seems to me that you have as much of that as anyone else." 

"No less of it, I suppose," I agreed, "but no more, either. That alone isn't a reason for Zophar to want to eliminate me—a group of lesser mages would be just as much of a danger to him." 

"Maybe it's just because you aren't afraid of him," Lira said. "Bullies are like that, I think—they're scared of people who stand up to them." 

"That still doesn't seem like enough," Ruby said. 

"It's frustrating that we may already have the key to Zophar's destruction, and not be able to use it because we can't find the lock," I said. Something in my own nature, mysterious even to me . . . I realized that I was scrubbing at my left cheekbone with my fingers, and forced myself to lower my hand. 

" _Haven't you guessed yet, Ghaleon? I am concerned about you . . . because you and I are exactly the same._ " 

"That," I said icily, as everyone else's heads whipped around, instinctively looking for the source of the voice, "is a transparent deceit, Zophar. Take your falsehoods elsewhere—I won't let you drive a wedge between myself and my allies." 

The laugh that followed set my teeth on edge. " _Dear Ghaleon. I thought we both knew that you were the expert liar here._ " 

My smile was razor-thin. "If we are, as you claim, 'exactly the same', then clearly we should also share that skill, shouldn't we?" 

" _You always were too smart for your own good._ " 

"You're the second person to tell me that in the past few weeks," I said dryly. 

The air made no response. 

"The second person?" Azure asked softly. 

I shrugged. "Althena said something very similar to me in a dream I had." 

"You? Dreaming of Althena?" Nall's voice was unexpectedly harsh. 

"Why not? I knew her longer and better than anyone else in this room except you." Again, I wondered what was bothering the White Dragon. His behaviour toward me didn't seem like it could be merely due to our history. There was something more going on here. However, I'd have time enough to think about it later. "Lady Lira, Master Ludus . . . I trust I don't have to tell you to be careful what you say, and to whom. Zophar may have other allies here—and they may not be the same as those who have openly allied themselves with Altus." 

"You really do have a twisty mind," Azure squeaked. 

"I wish I could believe that was a compliment," I whispered, for her ears alone. The Blue Dragon giggled. 

"We still haven't settled the question of what we're going to do," Lira said. 

The door opened and shut quietly as Meloth slipped into the room with us. I ignored him after a brief glance—he was just as deep in this as the rest of us, and had just as much of a right to know what was going on. 

"We wait for Altus to wake up, I suppose," I said. "The alternative is to try for the Star Dragon Tower, and Lucia, immediately . . . and I don't think that's necessary, or even wise. Without more information, we can't take the fight to Zophar unless he decides to manifest himself physically . . . and I doubt he's stupid enough to do that at this stage. Given that Altus is here, and available, there's no need yet to go seeking what we need further afield." 

"And while we wait?" Ruby asked. 

I shrugged. "I suppose I try to familiarize myself with the current state of the Guild, so that I'll at least have some idea what I'm going to be countersigning on Lira's behalf. I have no immediate plans involving you, Nall, or Azure." 

"I'm going to stick around here for a while, just to keep an eye on things," Azure piped up, "so if you and Nall want to go back to Taben's Peak . . ." 

"I don't know," Nall said, giving me a grim look. 

"Oh, for . . . Nall, he isn't going to get up to anything in the next few hours," Ruby said firmly. "You can take a little time to check on the children—remember what happened the _last_ time we left them alone for this long?" 

Nall groaned. "Don't remind me. It took a week to get the kitchen clean again, even with everyone helping. All right, you've convinced me . . . but Ghaleon, don't forget that the fact that we're allies for the present doesn't make us friends." 

"I would never be so conceited," I said with a thin smile as the White Dragon turned to make his exit. 

"Whew," Meloth said when the door had closed behind Nall and Ruby. "Master, what did you do to make him so angry at you?" 

"I killed his father." I said it baldly, seeing no reason to keep from him what the rest of us already knew. "It turned out to be a stupid thing to do, but _un_ doing it is beyond my power . . . and in any case, it happened eighteen hundred years ago. I also kidnapped and brainwashed someone important to him, and . . . a number of other things. If you want the full tale of my youthful follies, I would suggest spending some time with the history books in the Library. I prefer not to dwell on my past stupidities." 

"Um," my apprentice remarked intelligently. "So what else did I miss?" 

Lira opened her mouth to answer, then glanced at me. 

I shrugged. "By all means, tell him. Just make sure that you spare some of your attention to help me with this." I waved my hand expressively in the direction of the piles of paper on the desk in front of me. 

It was going to be a long day.


	13. Chapter 13

"You had the last few syllables wrong again," I said patiently, although the truth was that I felt anything but patient. Meloth had been failing at this lesson in a most uncharacteristic fashion. At least up here, on the roof of the Guild's Headquarters, there was no one to witness the proceedings. 

That had been a minor consideration when I'd chosen this as the location of my second death, too. I hadn't wanted my final collapse to be on display, as it would have been if I'd challenged Hiro somewhere more public. 

"I'll try again," the young beastman said grimly. 

I raised my hand to stop him. "Before you do that, you might tell me what's on your mind. You've been acting distracted, and I don't think it's just because the fair Lira is claiming a portion of your attention." 

The boy blushed, but when he spoke, his voice was even more grim. "I'm sorry, Master, it's just that . . . this, everything that's happened since we left Saith, it's . . . I keep wondering what I'm doing here. I'm just a merchant captain's son. Now suddenly I'm the personal apprentice of the Premier of Vane's Magic Guild, and in the middle of all these huge events . . . and I keep thinking that I don't have any business being here, that it should be someone else, someone more worthy . . ." His ears drooped pathetically. 

I could have laughed. "More worthy? Why? You're here as the direct consequence of the choices you've made. That's the only kind of 'worth' there is in this world, really—either you have the skill or the luck to choose well, or you don't. You rise to the challenges the world presents you with, or you don't . . . and from what I can see, you've done quite well so far." 

"But . . ." 

"You could have stayed in Saith," I pointed out. "I certainly didn't ask you to follow me to the mainland. Or you could have helped Altus set a trap for me—and don't pretend he never proposed the idea. Altus is no fool. But you didn't do either of those things." Indeed, I was surprised myself that the boy had so grimly kept faith with me. If anyone had suggested when he and I had first met that he'd end up being so steadfastly loyal, I would have laughed. 

"I . . . guess you're right," Meloth said with a tentative smile. 

"It's a good speech, anyway," squeaked an unfamiliar voice. I turned toward it, and found a black flying cat hovering near the edge of the roof. "So you're the infamous Ghaleon. You're not quite what I'd expected." 

"You're Zaile, I presume. I'm not responsible for your expectations." Something about the Black Dragon was already setting my teeth on edge. 

"Ghaleon, I think—" Azure skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs. "Zaile." She sounded . . . torn. Happy to see him, and yet . . . not. "What are you doing here?" 

"Aren't I allowed to come home occasionally?" I had never seen a dragon pout before. "Or visit a sick friend?" 

"This isn't your home anymore," Azure pointed out. "Nall would tell you the same thing if he were here." And now, she looked strained. 

"Oh, Nall." Zaile waved a paw in what I think was supposed to be an airy gesture. "You know as well as I do, Azure, that our White Dragon is just an old fuss-budget. Just because he worries about the obsolete laws laid down by a dead goddess all the time doesn't mean _we_ have to." 

I, however, was more interested in other matters. "What 'sick friend'?" It couldn't possibly be . . . 

"You should know—you're the one that nearly killed him, _Lord_ Ghaleon, and then locked him up so that I can't get to him. Those robed idiots you've got guarding your little jail won't let me in without your permission, dragon or no dragon." 

_Damn._ We'd probably never know how much useful information Zaile had given Altus without even realizing he was doing so—the Black Dragon didn't strike me as stupid, exactly, but he did remind me of a certain class of self- absorbed magical researcher I'd encountered a few times in Vane, and I doubted he paid much attention to what he was saying most of the time. The fact that the Enforcers guarding the jail were more frightened of me than of a Dragon of Althena was . . . heartening, in its way, though. 

"Speaking of jails, that's why I came up here in the first place," Azure said. "Altus is awake, although the healer- priest Ludus called in isn't sure how long he'll stay that way." 

I was already striding toward the head of the stairs. "If you want to see your 'friend', now would be a good time," I told Zaile in passing. 

We made a little parade of it—Azure, myself, Zaile, and Meloth bringing up the rear until Lira joined us on the ground floor of the building. 

They'd put Altus in the same cell that Meloth had occupied—poetic justice of a sort. As I had ordered, two Enforcers stood guard outside the door, with two more at the foot of the stairs. Ludus and the healer were inside the cell, where Altus was half-sitting, half-lying, propped up on a mound of pillows. 

Zaile made a sound of dismay and squeezed himself between the bars before we'd even had a chance to unlock the door. "Altus! You aren't—I mean—you aren't going to _die_ , are you?" the flying cat wailed. 

Altus, his face reddened and patchy with recently healed burns, managed a chuckle. "No, Zaile, I'm not going to die—actually, they tell me I'm not even going to scar much. If I weren't weak as a kitten, I'd be able to get out of bed right now." 

"Then you're going to be Premier again soon, and everything will be okay, right?" Zaile landed in Altus' lap, and the blonde man began to stroke him, a bit absently. I frowned. Something about Zaile's act rang false to me, as though he were trying too hard to appear childish and inept. This wasn't the same being as I'd conversed with on the rooftop. I would have liked to throw the flying cat out of the room, but couldn't think of a way to do it without appearing vindictive. 

"No, I won't be returning to my old post, either. I'd be a fool to even try—Lord Ghaleon is more than my match as a mage." 

"But . . ." 

"And I owe him an explanation for why I turned on him," Altus added, meeting my eyes as I stepped into the cell. 

"I assume it was because Zophar suggested it," I said evenly. "With your permission, I would like to continue this session under truth spell." 

"Under the circumstances, I can't very well stop you." Altus was still stroking Zaile. 

Ludus stirred. "Altus, one way or the other, this is probably going to end up as evidence at your trial. Your formal consent would make things . . ." 

" . . . tidier," I finished when the old man seemed unable to find an appropriate word. 

Altus sighed. "All right, then. I consent. Let's get this over with." 

I nodded to Ludus, who spoke the appropriate keyword, causing a faint greenish glow to settle over everyone in the cell. 

"Let us begin at the beginning," I said. "When did Zophar first contact you?" 

Altus grimaced, but didn't appear to be fighting the truth spell. "About twenty-six years ago." 

Azure growled softly. 

"That would have been not long after your brother's death." 

The blond man closed his eyes. "Yes." 

"Tell me about your early association with Zophar." 

Altus swallowed. "I think he may have spoken to Tephos—my brother—first. Tephos was killed by the protections on the safe in the Premier's office when he tried to burgle it—I never did find out why. It seemed odd at the time that he would try to do something so . . . important . . . without talking to me about it. Zophar spoke to me first when I was . . . in mourning, although he didn't tell me who he was until . . . Anyway, he convinced me that my brother's death was the Premier's fault, and made . . . suggestions . . . I insinuated myself into the confidence of the then-current Premier by pretending that I wanted to make up for what my brother had done. It took me six years to build up enough power and knowledge that I figured I had a chance of taking him on, though, since Zophar couldn't help me much." 

Altus opened his eyes again, but his gaze was unfocussed, and it seemed pretty clear that he wasn't seeing the walls of his cell, or the people crowded into it with him. "I'd lent the Premier my family's grimoire, and he was fascinated by the mana concentration spell—kept on working on ways to amplify it. It was Zophar who told me about the alternative uses of that spell, insinuating that a perfected version could be used to bring my brother back to life. At his suggestion, I tested it . . . and got a whole lot more than I bargained for. You've probably figured that part of the story out too." 

"Still, it would be nice if you spelled it out for those of us who aren't quite as knowledgeable as our esteemed Premier," Azure drawled. 

For the first time since Zaile had landed in his lap, Altus' hands stopped moving. 

"Zophar offered to boost my casting of the spell," he said wearily. "I took him up on it. Unfortunately, the spell schematic was incomplete, and it got out of control, nearly draining both of us dry, and temporarily reanimating every corpse for miles around. A couple of hundred mana puppets, all infused with my hatred of the then-current Premier . . . unfortunately, they couldn't tell him from any other beastman. I was unconscious during the slaughter, and when some of them slipped through a teleportation gate that someone had set up as an exercise, and got to Meribia . . . It was when I woke up the next day that Zophar finally gave me his name, and I learned what I had been serving. 

"As you know, I am of the Vile Tribe," the blond man continued, his hand rising to brush against the blue marking on his cheek. "Because Lord Ghaleon, our saviour, fought him, we regard Zophar as particular anathema." Still, he wouldn't meet my eyes. "But by then it was too late. I wanted to redeem myself, clear my name, but if anyone ever found out what I had done, I knew I would be . . . in at least this much trouble," he said with a wry smile. "Whenever I wavered, Zophar threatened to reveal what had happened—blackmailed me, in effect. Occasionally, I was able to sabotage his plans by pretending to be . . . less competent than I really am, but other than that . . ." He didn't finish the sentence, but his meaning was clear. "Things might have gone on that way forever if you hadn't reappeared, Lord Ghaleon." 

"You say that when Zophar assisted you with the variant mana concentration spell, it drained him as well as you?" I asked. 

"I think so. Before that, he was able to do small things . . . affect the physical world . . . Afterwards, he couldn't anymore, or at least not that I ever saw. And I could feel his power being drawn out past me . . ." 

"You're saying that, although it's been twenty years, he still hasn't fully recovered? That doesn't seem like the Zophar I knew." Or did it? I'd always assumed that resurrecting me had required a massive magical exertion on the demon godling's part, but if he hadn't actually _done_ that . . . 

"I think . . . He never came right out and said it, but I got the impression that he was able to build up strength more quickly when you knew him because he was feeding off your magic, that for some reason you make a particularly good mana concentrator, or something. He didn't have that advantage this time." 

So it was down to me again. Damn it all. 

"Did you kill Milia Ausa?" I asked, deciding that we had exhausted the usefulness of my earlier line of questioning. 

"No, although I was the one who found the body. She was probably killed while we were still talking that night—I wanted to talk to her before my class, so I went to her office after I'd snatched a couple of hours of sleep, and found her already cold." He hesitated, then added, "She'd taken that old portrait of you—it must have dated from your original tenure as Premier, given how you were dressed in it—out of storage and had it on her desk, so the thought did cross my mind that you might have killed her to safeguard your identity . . . but then why leave the portrait there? I knew you weren't that stupid, but when Zophar suggested we . . . make use of the incident . . . He really is terrified of you." 

"For the record," I said, "I did not kill Milia Ausa. I wasn't even aware of the matter until you accused me outside that cafe." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ludus relax, just a little. He really hadn't been sure of me until that moment. "And if that portrait shows me wearing that ridiculous headdress, I want it burned." 

Altus managed a raspy laugh. "I don't blame you. Fortunately, your successor . . . did not reinstitute the custom, so I've never actually had to wear the thing myself . . ." Zaile nudged his hand, and he started petting the flying cat again, although his gaze was still fixed on me. "That portrait's been preserved by generations of Vile-Tribe-descended Guild members, since it was the only image we had of you, but it sure as hell doesn't do justice to the real thing." 

"Spare me," I said acidically. "Do you have any idea who _was_ responsible for Milia's death? Or . . ." 

"Could it have been from natural causes?" Altus finished. "No, I don't think so—whoever had done it had left the knife in the wound. It had gone in under her left shoulderblade. No sign of a struggle—I think she may have been attacked from behind." 

The killer hadn't been a mage who thought himself good enough to take on the Guildmistress, then. Or perhaps it had been a good mage trying to keep himself from being suspected . . . _The problem with that twisty mind Azure accused me of having is that I see too many possibilities—all I have to do is think about how_ I _might have done something, and dozens, even hundreds, of pathways open up in front of my mind's eye . . ._

"Barren Earth," I muttered. "So on top of everything else, we have a killer loose in the city." And the Guildmistress was just a child, and I had responsibilities reaching beyond just Vane and the Guild . . . "Altus, do you want a chance to redeem yourself?" 

The blond never blinked. "More than anything." 

"Very well. I am putting you in charge of finding Milia Ausa's true killer, and bringing that person to justice." 

" _What?!_ Master—" 

I ignored Meloth's exclamation—it was probably involuntary anyway. "Under normal circumstances, I would leave you locked up here to rot, but it's looking more and more like I won't be able to remain in Vane. You will be kept under guard at all times—Ludus, you'll assign the guards. You will also keep Ludus and the Guildmistress apprised of your progress. And if I discover that you've been less than honest with them, that you've slipped your guards even for a second, or that you've acted in any way against the best interests of Vane, the Magic Guild, or Lunar, I will bind you hand and foot and drop you in the middle of the Frontier to die of exposure." Altus spoke constantly of his Vile Tribe lineage, so I was willing to bet that he'd heard of their ancient method of capital punishment. "Is that understood?" 

"Yes, my lord." 

"And where are _you_ going to be?" Ludus spoke for the first time since he had invoked the truth spell. 

I sighed. "I've put this off for as long as I dared, but I don't think we have any choice now. I'm going to the Star Dragon Tower, and then to the Blue Star, to speak with Lucia . . . if she's still alive."


	14. Chapter 14

It was nearly dark when we landed outside the tower— myself, my stubborn apprentice, and all four Dragons of Althena. 

"Eight hundred years and it hasn't changed much," Ruby observed as she resumed her human form. "Except that someone's fixed the statues in the courtyard." 

"Why would anyone bother?" Azure asked. "They're some of the ugliest things I've ever seen." 

"They're guardians," Ruby explained. "I just hope we don't have to fight them." 

Nall just looked grimly up at the edifice. For some reason he was now carrying two swords across his back, his usual one and a second wrapped in what looked like ancient, brittle silk. I was curious about that, but not yet quite enough so to ask him about it, given his behaviour toward me to date. 

"Well, what are we waiting here for?" asked Zaile the flying cat, fluttering forward. The rest of us had to follow him, or risk him getting eaten by one of the statues . . . and while I felt that wouldn't be much of a loss, we might yet need the power of the Black Dragon of Althena, which meant that we couldn't afford to wait for his successor to mature . . . if he even had one yet. 

Perhaps it was the presence of the four dragons, but the statues showed no sign of moving as we passed between them, and we reached the huge door leading into the tower unmolested. 

Meloth gulped. "Uh, Ruby . . . you've been here before, right? Just how big is this place?" 

"It has eight floors," the Red Dragon replied. "The first six are full of monsters—about what you'd expect from a place like this. The seventh is the Star Dragon's lair. And the eighth is where the transportation device that will take us to the Blue Star is located." 

"Stay behind me at all times, boy," I added to the young beastman. "I don't want to have to explain to your parents how I let you get yourself eaten because you insisted on following me to one of the most dangerous places on Lunar." 

"Don't worry, Master—I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid." Somehow, the boy even managed to conjure up a sickly grin to go with his words. 

I would have preferred to leave him behind—I had _tried_ to leave him behind, telling him that he would be of more use to Lira, just now, than to me—but when Nall and Ruby had arrived in Vane to accompany me to the Tower (and I hadn't expected them to show up either, truth be told, although I'd asked Azure to inform them that we were going), Meloth had gone to the landing site and invited himself along by the simple expedient of swinging himself up on Ruby's back before her wings had even completely stilled. 

_Why do you follow me?_ I wondered, not for the first time. _I am a betrayer, a deceiver . . . I don't deserve that kind of loyalty. The dragons don't trust me, so they have every reason for being here, but you . . ._ I sighed, and pushed the door open. 

Ruby hadn't been joking about the monsters on the first six floors—animated statues and floating mirrors and odd little flying things carrying cannons. I had to resort to magic to handle them, since blocking one blow from one of the damned statues with my sword numbed my right arm almost to the shoulder . . . and didn't do the sword much good, either. When I sheathed it, there was a section of the blade as wide as my hand that had not only lost its edge, but had a half-moon-shaped indentation marring its lines. It was good that I'd never really valued the damned thing much. 

Thirty-eight of those damned statues later—and I won't even mention how many of the mirrors or the weird cannon- toting flying things we'd run into—we found the base of the next- to-last flight of stairs. 

"I guess this is it," Azure said, checking her short swords one last time. She'd been using them heavily, but only against the mirrors and the fliers. 

"Maybe we'll be able to just convince him to let us past," Zaile squeaked. He looked disgustingly fresh, but then again, he'd just been hovering out of reach while the rest of us fought. 

"I doubt it," Ruby said grimly. "The Star Dragon's sole duty is to prevent the unworthy from using the transport device. He takes it very seriously, and he doesn't care about his visitors' motivations." Her face was streaked with black—she'd been using fire magic with surprising facility, and often at very close range, as we ascended the tower. 

Nall just looked down at the sword he held in his hands, and frowned. The other sword, the one wrapped in silk, was still slung across his back, puzzling me. Why had he brought it along, if he hadn't intended to use it? 

Meloth, on the other hand, was looking up at the stairs, and I found I couldn't read his expression—awe? Fear? Then he looked at me, swallowed, and nodded. I wondered if he realized just what we were risking, here. I'd made a practice of never fighting dragons on an even footing—far easier to cripple them by stealing away their power, or their minds . . . neither of which I dared do here. And the Star Dragon was supposed to be far older and more powerful than his four colourful brethren . . . 

No, there was no time or room here for doubt. If I couldn't handle a mere dragon, I had no business challenging Zophar. The Star Dragon was not going to be a problem. 

"Let's get this over with," I said, and pushed past the others to begin climbing stairs. 

The floor above consisted of a single huge room which at first appeared to be empty. Then some of the shadows along the far wall resolved themselves into something large lying on the floor in front of the door leading to the next staircase. Slowly, it opened faintly glowing eyes. 

"Ghaleon, I presume. I've been waiting for you." 

"I suppose I don't dare hope that means you'll allow us to pass without fighting you," I said dryly. 

The Star Dragon responded with a chuckle that seemed to well up through the floor and vibrate in my bones. "I'd heard you had some wit. No, you may not pass without challenging me. My duty is paramount." 

"Then let's get this over with," I said, and strode forward to stand in the center of the room, while the four dragons remained clustered around the head of the stairs leading back down the tower. Meloth took a tentative step forward, but Azure grabbed his arm before he could go any further. 

"Challenges to the Star Dragon are always one-on-one duels," she said in a whisper that my acute hearing picked up anyway. "Let them be. Ghaleon knows what he's doing." 

I drew my damaged sword, although I was hoping not to have to use it, as the Star Dragon rose to a standing position and ambled across the floor until he stood opposite me. 

"This is your last chance to back out," the dragon said, then stopped, nostrils flaring. "How very odd. You smell like . . ." 

I frowned. "What?" 

"It's of no importance. I must be mistaken." 

And with that, I was apparently going to have to be content, although later I was to curse the memory of that moment. As it was, I could do nothing more useful than sharply ask, "Are you ready?" 

"Always. Show your determination to pass me, mortal!" And the tip of the single horn protruding from the huge green creature's forehead began to glow. I could sense magical energies gathering about us, but the spell was none that I knew. I snapped out the keyword of a Chaos Shield. There was a roar like thunder as magical force splashed against it. 

The Star Dragon's wings flashed, and he summoned fire. I responded with a Nitro Dagger, and the two magics clashed and annihilated each other in midair. 

I was getting the regrettable impression that we were too evenly matched, as Altus and I had been. The Star Dragon truly was more powerful than his lesser brethren . . . and yet I sensed that he was toying with me, not employing his full power. Well, I would teach him not to take me lightly. Hoping that Nall had the presence of mind to shield himself and the others, I snapped three keywords and braced myself for the buffeting that I knew was going to follow. 

The polychrome light of the Hellwave-Meteor- Shower combination that I had cast against Altus began to form above us . . . and then faded again as someone spoke a different keyword, one I couldn't make out because it was tangled up with "Master! Behind you!" and "Zaile! No! Ghaleon!" 

I spun smoothly and was just in time to bring a bracer- covered forearm up to block the descending blow of an axe. The heavy weapon left a nasty dent in the metal with a bone-deep bruise forming underneath. 

This . . . was this huge creature with the green-black skin Zaile? I recognized the general form, of course—he'd taken on the body of a member of one of the Vile Tribe subraces, one larger than human and possessed of massive strength—but Azure had said that he lacked the magical skills necessary to shape a humanoid body . . . _And I should have known better than to believe that when I heard he'd grown up in Vane,_ I told myself in disgust. The Black Dragon couldn't have lived in the no-longer-floating city without learning a thing or two about magic—indeed, Azure had said that he'd taught her. 

So now I had a hostile dragon at my back, and was facing an opponent a good head taller than I was—not to mention twice as broad—who was armed with something far more powerful than a damaged sword. Fortunately, I didn't have to rely on fighting him physically. I spoke the keyword of a Nitro Dagger, then added a curse as my opponent laughed and the spell died before it had fully formed. _Guess again, O Magic Emperor. You should have known that would be too easy._

Still, there were reasons that the axe was a less popular weapon than the sword. I ducked under Zaile's next blow and took a swing at the wooden haft, just below the head. 

If my sword had been intact, it might even have worked. Even in breaking, the blade left a nasty scar on the wood. 

With my own weapon reduced to a stub, I knew I was in trouble, but I was damned if I was going to go down without a fight. Besides, the thing about magic negation spells is that they have a finite duration—if I could keep myself from being bisected by that axe for the critical few minutes . . . 

Azure started forward, but the Star Dragon lashed his tail, cutting her off from me. "Do not interfere! If this . . . person, this would-be Magic Emperor, cannot prevail against one of the lesser dragons, how is he to win against me?" 

I aimed a kick at the side of Zaile's knee as I dodged another of his swings, but he moved at the last moment, and the blow glanced off the surface of his kneecap, nearly unbalancing me instead. 

"'Would be Magic'—but that's ancient history!" Azure shouted. "He isn't like that anymore!" 

The tail didn't move. "You are young, so perhaps you are not yet entirely aware that nothing is ancient history to our kind, little one. I have been here since this tower was built. I have seen this man's deeds, and I am still not satisfied that his purpose here is good and not evil . . . especially when one of your fellows has chosen to fight him." 

I ducked under the axe as it whirred past, deflecting it upward by striking the shaft with my bracer, and trying to sink a fist into the pit of his stomach. I say "trying" because all I managed to do was bruise my knuckles—his abdominal muscles were like rock. 

"But . . . Zaile's gone mad!" 

"Or the rest of you have been deceived!" the Star Dragon snarled, shaking the tower. "If you wish to help your . . . friend . . . you will have to fight your way past me, and I will not stay my hand as I am required to do in my duels against mortals. It will be dragon against dragon, as it was in the days of the old wars!" 

"May I at least return to him something he lent to a friend a long time ago?" 

Nall's words fell into a period of relative silence during which Zaile and I backed off from one another, glaring and panting. 

"You intrigue me, little one. Very well." 

A flash of purple out of the corner of my eye. I reacted instinctively, flinging the shards of my broken sword at Zaile's face and dodging to the left to intercept what Nall had just thrown . . . and then dodging again to keep from getting skewered as it fell. 

My old sword, the one I'd given to Hiro eight hundred years ago, was balanced in such a way that it inevitably fell point- down, and embedded its tip in a crack between two of the flagstones forming the floor. I immediately snatched at the hilt, pulling it loose and bringing it up to parry another blow of the axe in a single fluid motion. Unlike the sword I'd bought in Saith, this blade, with its purple-black magical patina, was a bastard sword, with a hilt long enough for me to get both hands on it . . . which made it much better suited to blocking blows from Zaile's heavier weapon. 

Zaile and I circled cautiously, and now that I was no longer frantically scrambling to stay alive, I was able to note certain things about him—like the fact that he appeared to be left- handed. My eyes narrowed. 

"So _you_ were Milia Ausa's murderer," I said experimentally—a stab wound under the left shoulderblade _might_ have meant an attack from behind plus a left- handed opponent—and was rewarded with a flinch from the Black Dragon. "No wonder you were able to take her by surprise—she'd never seen you as anything but a flying cat, and you must have been a familiar sight around Vane in that form, since Altus clearly knows you well. What I don't understand is _why_ . . . although I suppose I'll convince you to tell me soon enough," I added when he didn't seem inclined to fill my pause for me. 

However, I was handicapped by the fact that I really didn't want to kill Zaile. Right now there was a huge opening where a lunge might have driven my sword into his abdomen while I took his axe on my shoulder-armour, but I didn't dare make use of it. I needed to disable or disarm him . . . hamstring him, perhaps? Most of the openings he left were low, so a strike at his knee shouldn't be impossible . . . I stopped circling and stepped in, aiming a feint at the outer point of his shoulder, and then struck low. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't really half the swordsman that Dyne, who had long ago taught me the art, had been, and when Zaile moved, I was unable to redirect my strike properly. Instead of slicing the tendons at the back of his knee, my blade sank deep into his thigh, and when blood spurted out past it, I knew I had cut into the great artery there. Determined to make the best of it, I yanked the sword out, and knocked Zaile's axe from his hand as the sudden pain and loss of blood pressure sent him crashing down on the other knee. A kick sent the weapon spinning away across the floor as my former opponent slowly collapsed the rest of the way. 

Zaile was already looking pale and shocky, turning a most unattractive shade of green, and I knew I needed to do something before he lost consciousness for the last time. Bending down, I flipped a corner of my cape across the wound, then, because I had a feeling that the pressure I could apply with my hands wouldn't turn out to be enough, I pinned it down with my knee. 

"Azure, I need you over here," I snapped, knowing that the Blue Dragon would have healing powers—a branch of magic that I never had mastered, and which was normally the province of Althena's priesthood rather than the mages anyway. 

"You would save the life of your enemy?" the Star Dragon asked, with interest. 

"I need him," I explained grimly. "Both because he's the Black Dragon, and because he still hasn't told me why he's doing this." 

Zaile laughed harshly. "Motivations, is that all you ever worry about?" 

"If I understand why an enemy acts, I can predict what he's going to do next," I said as Azure knelt beside me, wondering at the sudden need to explain myself. "That allows me to make my own plans in such a way that I can achieve my objectives more quickly and with minimal damage to myself or my opponents." It was also what I hadn't done—hadn't _been able_ to do—during my stint as the Magic Emperor. If I hadn't spent that entire period half-crazed with pain, I would have known my plans were doomed to failure before I'd even started executing them. 

"Interesting," the Star Dragon murmured, but my eyes were on Azure as she knelt beside me, murmured the beginning of a spell . . . and then slowly shook her head. 

"It's no good—I can feel whatever it was that he cast before draining the energy from my spell." 

"And I'd rather commit suicide than have you save me, Skyblue. Sorry." Somehow, Zaile managed to speak, and even to smile, despite the fact that he couldn't have much blood left. 

"Zaile, you idiot . . ." Azure picked up his left hand and cradled it against her cheek. 

"Because I'd rather die free than live in a cage built for me by a dead goddess? Sorry to disappoint you, then. I do love you, you know. If only you'd felt the same way . . ." 

Tears spilled from Azure's eyes. 

"I make a lousy dragon, don't I?" Zaile added. "Wanting to be a mage . . . siding with Zophar . . . I just wanted to be free." 

" _Free?_ " Unfortunately, I knew that voice. That laughter. " _Then you should never have given anything of yourself to me, fool. Now, come._ " 

There was a harsh cry and a popping sound, and Zaile vanished . . . or most of him did. His hand, neatly severed at the wrist, remained in Azure's grasp, and of course the knee I'd been using to put pressure on his wound hit the floor in the middle of a puddle of blood, splashing both Azure and I with red. 

"Barren Earth," I muttered tiredly. 

"I don't get it," Meloth said. "What happened?" 

"Zophar has him," I replied grimly. "The magic negation spell Zaile used is apparently one of the types that only affects spells originating within an area, so Zophar was able to teleport him out." 

"Then the next person we're going to end up fighting . . ." Ruby began. 

" . . . will probably be the Black Dragon of Althena, or whatever's left of him once Zophar is done . . . improving him," I completed for her, scrubbing my hand absently over my left cheekbone and leaving a sticky red trail of dragon blood behind. 

"Zaile . . ." Azure was still cradling the Black Dragon's severed hand. Then she set it down gently in the middle of the red pool on the floor . . . and flung herself at me. Indeed, if she hadn't wrapped her arms around me and held on with desperation, she might have knocked me over. As soon as the shock had worn off, I put my old sword slowly down beside me and embraced her, holding her as she sobbed—a service that I'd performed a few times for Lemia Ausa, long ago, and once for Dyne, in the small hours of the morning after his father's wake. It was probably a good thing he'd been too drunk to remember that afterwards, though. 

"It isn't hopeless," I murmured in her ear. "He's still alive. We'll think of something." 

"He was my only friend," she said through the sobs. "For such a long time, he was the only . . . Althena have mercy . . ." 

It was then that I realized that Azure's familiar cheerful facade was just that: A facade. A mask. And underneath it, deep inside . . . I knew those feelings. 

Azure and Zaile. Myself and Dyne. 

"You aren't alone," I told her, gently stroking her hair. They were the words I wished someone had spoken to me long ago. "Don't be afraid. Even if you and he never meet again, there will always be those in this world who love you." 

A small weight settled on my shoulder, and a tail wrapped itself around the back of my neck—Ruby, balancing herself as she stretched out her neck to rub her cheek against that of the distraught Blue Dragon. "Listen to him, Azure. He's right. We're all here for you." 

It was a moment before Azure could find a long enough gap between the sobs to whisper, " . . . thank you." 

I drew her slowly to her feet. Everyone in the room was watching us. Meloth had a tear or two glimmering in his eye as well—the sentimentality of the young—but Nall and the Star Dragon wore what, to my eye, appeared to be very similar expressions, puzzled and a bit tired. 

"Will you be all right?" I murmured in Azure's ear as her grip on me began to relax. "I have a duel to finish." 

She sniffled, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and nodded. I let her go and bent down to pick up my sword, flicking it sharply to get the blood off. Then I turned to the Star Dragon. 

"I thank you for staying your hand while I completed my other business," I said. "Let's finish this." 

"I think . . . not," the huge, green creature said slowly. 

I narrowed my eyes. "If you want to turn this into a real battle, we can do so at any time," I said sharply. 

"You misunderstand . . . and if you had mentioned Zophar to begin with, I wouldn't have asked you to fight at all. Since Althena is no longer here, Lucia must be told that that ancient evil has once more resurfaced. I may not be certain that I can trust you, Ghaleon . . . but I know that I cannot trust him. And so I will permit you to enter the topmost level of the tower." 

"Thank you." My old sword wouldn't fit in the sheath that had been occupied by the one I'd bought in Saith. I looked thoughtfully over at Nall, and spotted the scabbard at his feet, among scraps of rotted silk. He took a step back from me as I walked over and bent to pick it up. 

"How did you come to have this, anyway?" I asked as I sheathed the blade and unbuckled my swordbelt to swap the scabbards. 

Nall shrugged. "Hiro left it with me when I gave him the Sword of Althena. I should probably have had it put in a museum somewhere—the sword that defeated Zophar has got to be a priceless historical artefact—but for some reason, I held on to it." He looked down, shuffling his feet for a moment, then added, "I also have something that someone else gave me to hold onto for you, but we can talk about that when we get back from the Blue Star." 

Something that someone else had asked him to give me? But that meant . . . I frowned and decided to keep my questions to myself for the time being. Dealing with Zophar was more important right now than solving my private mystery. "For now, I suggest we get on with turning it into the sword that defeated Zophar _twice_ ," I said, getting wan smiles from Meloth and Azure for my trouble. 

The topmost floor of the Star Tower was dominated by a man-sized, glowing, green crystal that stood opposite the door at the end of a long pathway marked with stylized arrows. 

"That's the transport device? How does it work?" Meloth asked. 

"I don't know," Ruby admitted. "Hiro just kind of . . . walked into it." 

I frowned. "This looks like a Mechanical-Age relic, in which case there should be . . ." I vaulted over the low railing near the entrance without finishing my sentence, and began to search the side of the raised walkway. "Here we are." Under my hand, a panel moved, flipping itself upward. I was immediately surrounded by three dragons, two of them now in flying-cat form, and one curious young beastman. "This is part of the maintenance system," I explained, "intended to monitor the functioning of the device. Most of them are straightforward enough that an intelligent person can figure them out without instruction, so long as he can read the script. Hmm. 'Mark IV Transport System'. We appear to have full power, and the device is locked to a destination somewhere on the Blue Star, which I assume to be Lucia's location. The terminal at the other end is also functioning, so we should have no trouble getting back." I touched the square on the screen that was marked "Help", hoping that the information thus produced would give me an overview of how to use the transportation device. "It appears that Ruby is correct, and we really do just walk into it . . . one at a time. And move away from the, er, landing site immediately upon arrival. It looks like trying to go two at once, or while someone else is still in the arrival zone, can have . . . unfortunate results." 

"Let's do it, then," Nall said. "I'll go first." 

He vaulted back over the railing and strode along the walkway, following the arrows to the crystal. Once he touched it, he seemed to fade out of existence . . . but I was able to see a mote of green light travel rapidly across the screen in front of me, and the information about the receiving device sprouted notations indicating that he had arrived at his destination. 

Ruby followed him almost immediately, fluttering over to the crystal and vanishing. That left myself, Azure, and Meloth. I nodded to the young beastman, who swallowed and kilted his robe up to make it easier to get back over the railing. 

"You next," Azure squeaked, nudging my neck. 

"Are you sure?" I asked. 

The Blue Dragon nodded. "Nall will never let me live it down if I let you go last—he's still suspicious of you. I can tell. He'll think you want to sabotage the device at this end, or something else stupid like that." 

"All right, then. You understand . . ." I gestured at the screen I'd been watching. 

"Stop being so paranoid. I can't read the writing, but it doesn't take a genius to follow a green light from one side of a panel to the other." 

"Very well." I vaulted the railing myself, and followed the walkway to its end, then cautiously reached out to touch the crystal. The moment I did, I could feel something pulling at me, like the great-grandfather of all teleportation spells. I could have fought it, but instead I gave in and let it carry me away. 

The world flickered, stuttered, and became shadowy and very cold. I stepped forward, away from my point of arrival, gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering . . . and then had to ungrit them to voice the keyword of a spell to keep myself warm. As it turned out, it was fortunate that it was a small spell, because the mana that flowed through me in response was thin and weak. 

"So this is the Blue Star," I said, breath clouding the air as I looked around. 

Like the transport device on Lunar, the green crystal at which we had arrived stood in the middle of a tower room, but the walls here were pierced with archways every few feet, making them more open space than barrier. Cautiously, I approached one of them and looked out. 

Clouds loured overhead, and what light penetrated them revealed what might have been late fall or early winter in one of the flatter, unforested parts of Lunar, with rocks and dead vegetation still poking up through the surface of the snow. The building we were in appeared to be built at the edge of a lake, mostly frozen over at the moment, although there were a few patches of dark, open water. 

"They're going to have to write one heck of an advertising brochure to make anyone want to move here," Azure observed from behind me. 

"It clearly isn't ready for human habitation yet," I replied as she settled on my shoulder. "Although, given that there's plenty of water and things evidently do grow here sometimes, it's already an order of magnitude better than the Frontier." 

"C-can we g-go ins-s-side?" Meloth's teeth, I reflected, had to be chattering very hard to give him such a stutter, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I noticed that his lips were turning blue. 

I immediately took off my cape and draped it over his shoulders—even if it was still soaked in blood near the hem, he needed the extra layer of clothing. "Fool boy, why didn't you tell me you were so cold? Let's get under cover." 

The stairs were at the far end of the room from the crystal, and a short distance down, we found a landing and a door. On the other side of that, the air was warmer . . . more or less. The temperature was above freezing, anyway, and Meloth's teeth stopped chattering, but I was still glad of my warmth-spell. 

Once the door was closed, the stairwell was also very dark—apparently the lights in this area had failed at some point over the passing centuries. To my surprise, Meloth began the light-spell chant before the door had even closed . . . but nothing happened when he completed his casting. I could hear the grim note in his voice as he began again, and interrupted him with a keyword. 

"Don't worry about it, boy," I added. "The mana here is weak." And indeed, my own light spell had manifested itself as a globe of foxfire much paler than what I normally would have produced. 

Meloth laughed shakily. "It must be very weak, because I can't seem to gather any in at all. I guess I still have a lot to learn." 

Out of the corner of my eye, I noted that Nall was watching me with that peculiar expression on his face again. 

For three floors, we followed the stairs in not-circles around what appeared to be the heart of a square stone tower . . . an empty tower, I discovered as I glanced through open doorways. Whatever this building was, it hadn't been initially constructed as Lucia's seat, or the designers would have made more efficient use of the space—people from the Mechanical Age, according to my studies, had been big on that kind of efficiency. 

"There's no dust," Azure observed on one landing. "Does Lucia clean this entire place by herself?" 

"I doubt it," I replied. "During the Mechanical Age, people built little devices to take care of such matters, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that such things are still functioning here." 

Azure managed a flying-cat version of a smile. "I think you know more about that half-ruin you live in than you care to admit." 

I shrugged. "I studied what the original owners left behind—I'm easily bored, and since the information had just been lying around, it would have been . . . ungrateful . . . not to make use of it." 

The Blue Dragon giggled. 

At the bottom of the flight of stairs, we found another door. Nall, who was in the lead, opened it impatiently . . . and then stopped dead in the doorway, while Ruby, who had been seated on his shoulder, gasped and shot away from him. 

"Hiro? Hiro, is that you? Hiro?" 

I put both hands on the shoulders of the White Dragon, and pushed him firmly out of my way. 

The stairway down from the tower emptied out into a huge room, at the center of which a more-than-man-sized blue crystal hung suspended in a shaft of green light. Inside it, two— two?—figures could be seen floating. 

There was a walkway leading up to it, and I headed in that direction for a closer look. As I got nearer, I was able to identify the people inside the crystal as Lucia . . . and Hiro. They floated together, naked, arms around each other, and Hiro looked only a little older than when I had seen him last. 

Ruby was draped over the crystal, staring at her childhood friend. As for me, I was a little less restrained. I walked right up to the thing and knocked on its side. 

Lucia's eyes flew open immediately, and she blinked at me and shook Hiro awake. The young man knuckled the sleep from his eyes, did a double-take, and mouthed my name . . . or perhaps even spoke it, since I had no way of telling whether the crystal was soundproof or not. I nodded and made a sharp beckoning gesture. 

Lucia stepped forward and through the crystal's wall, and nearly fell into my arms. I held her by the shoulders until she found her balance. 

"Ghaleon. But . . ." Then Lucia, staring, recoiled violently from my touch until her back was pressed against the side of the crystal. "No, this cannot . . . you cannot be . . . Althena's Law . . ." 

"Lucia," I began sternly, but Nall interrupted me from behind. 

"Ghaleon, back off. She's terrified of you for a reason." 

_Which is?_ But I obediently took a couple of steps back and to the side, and let Nall squeeze past me and take the goddess' hands in his. 

"Lucia, everything you sense about Ghaleon is true, but . . ." Nall sighed. "Damnit, I never thought I was going to say this about the Magic Emperor, but he isn't evil, okay? Zophar made a series of choices to end up where he is. Ghaleon has it within him to make different ones. It doesn't have to end up the same way." 

"I thought before that I was only sensing Zophar's taint on him," Lucia murmured, "but he truly is, isn't he? Born outside the Law . . ." 

"Will you two stop talking in code and tell the rest of us what's going on?" Azure asked from my shoulder before I could hush her. Nall and Lucia just stared at us without replying. 

"Zophar was right, wasn't he, when he claimed that he and I were in some way the same," I said sharply. More silence. " _Tell me._ " 

Nall unfroze a little. "Remember what I told you about Althena's Law and the limitations placed on dragons? Well, about eight thousand years ago, before those laws were in place, the Blue Dragon Cerulean fell in love with a human man and bore him a son—well, an egg, really, that eventually hatched into a boy-child. Cerulean named him Zophar." Nall swallowed. Hard. "A little more than eighteen hundred years ago, Quark, my father, was seduced by a woman of the Vile Tribe, and broke Althena's Law with her. 

"Their child was you, Ghaleon. Brother."


	15. Chapter 15

"Don't call me that!" The words burst forth with a force that I hadn't expected. 

However, now that he'd begun speaking, Nall was relentless. "Quark kept a journal, which he left behind in the White Dragon Cave. I didn't find it until a couple of hundred years ago, which was maybe just as well. He watched over you from the day you were born until the day you killed him. Reading that journal, you can see how pleased he was, how proud he was of you—how much he loved—" 

"Spare me!" I snarled. I was trembling like a leaf— when had that started? "If Quark truly was my father, he abandoned me within days of my birth, without even bothering to name me. There isn't—there never was—anything between me and him—or me and you!" 

"Master . . ." 

"Leave him be, Meloth," Ruby said with surprising firmness. I hadn't even been sure she was listening. "I'd be a little shocked myself, if I'd just found out that I'd murdered my own father without even knowing it." 

I forced myself to take deep breaths, to unclench my hands. Slowly, I got the shaking under control. 

"It doesn't matter," I said with forced nonchalance. "Quark is nearly two millennia dead, and as for you being my brother, Nall . . . well, I doubt you like that idea any more than I do. We needn't acknowledge it . . . even if it is true." 

"What I'd like to know is what this _means_ ," Azure said, and I think she felt my gratitude in my slight relaxation. "Zophar and you, Lucia, are both deathly afraid of Ghaleon, and yet he doesn't have nearly the same level of power as either of you—he's proven in the past that he's stronger than any one dragon, but you are both stronger than _four_ of us working together. I don't understand." 

Lucia straightened slowly and, with a gesture, caused herself to be dressed in a familiar red outfit—hardly surprising that she'd find it a bit chilly. 

"It has to do with . . . what a dragon is," she said, even more slowly, "and why five of your kind were placed on Lunar. Within a mature dragon burns a magical fire. The White, Red, Blue, and Black Dragons are the source of the majority of Lunar's mana." 

"Wha-at?" It was Ruby who shrieked that. "Nall, why didn't you ever tell me?!" 

"Because, until this moment, I didn't know. Luna never said more than that we were essential to Lunar's survival." 

"When we made the dragons, we designed you so that you could not retain much mana on your own," Lucia continued, looking unhappy. "You can use some of what you produce, but not store and concentrate it the way a human can. The Dragon Auras are devices that _do_ allow you to concentrate some power, but also limit the ways in which you can use it." 

"And the reason we're forbidden to study human magic is to keep us from finding a way around that," Azure said. "Poor Zaile." The last two words, she barely breathed, and even I probably wouldn't have heard them if she hadn't been sitting practically in my ear. 

That made Lucia look even less happy, but she soldiered on. "Zophar . . . inherited certain traits from both his parents: from Cerulean, the ability to generate mana like a dragon, and from his father, the ability to store and concentrate it like a human. Althena forbid further hybridization because we feared that it might generate additional amoral beings with similar characteristics, and defeating Zophar the first time took nearly everything we had." Her mouth curved grimly downward. "We could not kill him. His body was destroyed more than once, but he was somehow, perhaps even instinctively, able to hold his soul together with scraps of mana until he could create a new one." 

I couldn't help it. I laughed. 

"My apologies," I said when I recovered myself. "For a moment, I was . . . overwhelmed with irony. For weeks now, I've been wondering who or what brought me back to life . . . and now it appears that I may have done it myself, without even being aware of it." More soberly, I added, "However, if I'm generating mana, I would think I'd have noticed before now." 

"The amount you are generating is small, but sufficient to sense," Lucia replied. "But it is a capacity which grows with time, and for a dragon, you are . . . very young. Indeed, it is likely that your power will one day exceed Zophar's by a considerable margin, since members of the Vile Tribe have a natural magical ability which humans lack. However, at this time, you possess only a tiny fraction of that power." 

"The question is, is it enough to defeat Zophar?" I said, my mood shifting all the way back to grim. 

Lucia blinked, then sighed. "I had wondered why you had come here. He is back, then. Well, it was inevitable, but . . ." She glanced over her shoulder at Hiro, whose eyes had closed again. 

"Let him sleep," I said. "He's already done more than his share. Time enough to wake him if something goes wrong." 

"But . . ." piped a high-pitched voice from the top of the crystal. 

Lucia looked up, and smiled. "Don't worry, Ruby. You'll see him again, one day, when the Blue Star is finally healed. This—" She gestured at the crystal. "—is what he chose for himself, so as not to force me to choose between him and my duty. But for now, I think Ghaleon is right. Let him sleep until my duty is over, and there is nothing left to hold me back from making a life with him." 

"You must love each other a lot," Meloth said, then blushed. 

The Princess of the Blue Star rested her hand against the crystal for a moment. "Hiro is the one who taught me what love is. I don't think I could ever do other than hold him in my heart." 

There was a brief silence. 

" . . . As for Zophar," Lucia said at length, "if you have caught him early enough in his cycle, the Four Dragons will be able to deal with him without any other aid." 

"If we still had four dragons, that might even be true," Nall said, "but we don't." Azure buried her face against my neck as the White Dragon explained what had happened to Zaile. 

"This situation is . . . unprecedented," Lucia murmured when he was done. "I need to think." 

She strode over to a door half-hidden in the shadows on the far side of the room, and disappeared through it. 

"And I feel much the same way," I admitted with a sigh. "If you will excuse me . . . ?" 

No one spoke, but after one final nudge at my neck, Azure fluttered from my shoulder to Nall's, and I turned back the way we had come, re-entering the tower. 

I didn't go all the way to the top. There was a room halfway up whose far wall was pierced by several windows, some of them with thick stone shelves just below them. I seated myself on one that permitted me an excellent view of the frozen landscape of the Blue Star. 

Well, at least now I understood my fondness for high places. Somewhere deep inside, part of me was convinced that I had wings. 

Quark. How in hell could that fool of a dragon have been my father? And yet . . . all of those years ago . . . Quark had been the only dragon who hadn't fought me. He'd only screamed. The memory was still quite vivid, but then from my point of view, those events had taken place less than a decade ago. 

And that nameless Vile Tribe woman of whom Nall had spoken . . . who had she been? What had she been like? She had to have come from one of a handful of families, to have produced a son with my peculiar set of physical characteristics, but try as I might, I couldn't remember if any of them had lost a daughter around the right time—the information simply hadn't been of any interest to me back then, when I'd thought they couldn't possibly be my kin. And there was always the possibility that she could have been a Solitary, one who had chosen to live apart from family and Tribe. There had always been a few. 

I couldn't even have said why I suddenly wanted so desperately to connect with her. I'd spent my entire life up until now without a family. As a child, that had hurt, but as an adult, I thought I'd sloughed off that pain. Perhaps it was one of those things that ran too deep for that. 

The other facet of my mixed heritage was no less disturbing. If Alex hadn't stopped me all those years ago, I _would_ have become another Zophar, and maybe even done to Lunar what my . . . cousin . . . had done to the world now spread out below me. It could still happen. Unless my potential was cut short by my death—and it now appeared quite likely that I _could not_ truly die even if I wanted to—I would one day mature into a godling myself, a creature of tremendous power restrained only by my conscience. 

"A conscience that many people would say that I don't have," I said aloud, with an ironic smile. 

"That's because 'many people' are stupid," squeaked a familiar voice. 

"Azure," I greeted with a sigh. "I thought you understood that I wanted to be alone for a while." 

"Oh, I got that, all right," the Blue Dragon said as she fluttered across the room to settle in my lap. "It's just that I thought afterwards that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let you brood for too long. You always get so gloomy when you've been thinking. So I got Meloth to let me through the door—the mana here is so weak that I didn't want to waste any on a transformation. You're . . . all right, aren't you? Ghaleon?" 

"I think I may still be in shock," I answered as my hands, seemingly of their own volition, smoothed her fur. "It isn't every day that you find out you're the next thing to a god-in- waiting. My entire world has suddenly been inverted . . . and yet nothing has changed: my plans for the future aren't one iota different from what they were before we left Lunar. It's almost enough to make me wonder if Althena didn't deliberately set up that whole 'Magic Emperor' episode to teach me the potential consequences of meddling in what doesn't concern me." 

"Mmm, move your hand up just a little . . . yes, right _there_." Azure's eyes were slitted with pleasure. 

"Are all Blue Dragons such hedonists?" I wondered aloud. 

"Only when they l-like the person who's scratching behind their ears." I hadn't noticed before that she had a stutter, but she continued speaking before I had a chance to wonder about that too much. "Seriously, though, isn't it just a _bit_ arrogant to think that a goddess would put such a high value on teaching you a lesson that she'd set you up to attack Her dragons and shoot Vane down from the sky?" 

I chuckled. "Perhaps. Or perhaps, if she feared my becoming another Zophar . . . perhaps it isn't arrogance at all," I added with a frown. 

"Like I said—gloomy! You're too serious. Don't you know how to take it easy?" 

"'Not nearly enough wisdom, faith, love, or joy . . .'" I quoted, remembering. 

"Huh?" 

"Do you remember the dream about Althena I mentioned when we were in Lira's office after my fight with Altus? That's one of the things she said to me. She seems to agree with you that I spend too much time thinking things to death." 

"Well, then, you couldn't have it on better authority," the Blue Dragon said firmly. 

I raised an eyebrow. "It's certainly better than being lectured by a flying blue furball." 

"I hope for your sake that that was supposed to be a joke." The way Azure's face screwed up when she glared at me was so bizarre that I couldn't help but laugh . . . and after a moment, she joined me. 

That was why, when the others came to look for us, they found us curled up together on a windowsill, chortling like idiots. 

"You two've certainly relaxed," Nall said—did I detect a hint of bitterness there? Ruby, beside him, was somehow managing to hover and droop at the same time, Meloth seemed to think I'd lost my mind, and Lucia . . . Lucia was staring at me intensely with an expression that suggested that of a craftsman looking at inadequate material that was nevertheless the best available. It was a look that sobered me immediately. 

"The . . . unavailability . . . of the Black Dragon has placed me in something of a quandary," she began without preamble. "In the First War, Zophar was defeated by Althena and the first Dragonmaster. When he reappeared on Lunar eight hundred years ago, the task fell to me . . . and to Hiro, who was also Dragonmaster in all but name." 

"Then you're going to have to wake Hiro up after all?" The thought caused Ruby to perk right up. 

Lucia shook her head. "It would be pointless. Two of the dragons who approved him are dead. Normally, he would simply renew his contract with their replacements . . . but without Zaile, that isn't possible. We will have to do without a Dragonmaster this time." 

"If that's even possible," Nall put in. "I still don't like this," he added to Lucia. 

"If you have a better plan, I will gladly listen to it," the Princess of the Blue Star replied. She hesitated for a moment, then went on, "We have never had a single . . . entity . . . who is potentially Zophar's equal at our disposal before." 

_Here it comes._ My hands stilled on Azure's back. 

"Ghaleon, I believe that it should be possible for you and the three remaining dragons to re-imprison Zophar . . . or perhaps even destroy him completely." 

I smiled thinly. "And how many years are you willing to wait before we begin? To date, it's apparently taken me centuries just to scrape together enough mana to reconstruct my body after I'm killed, and you've implied that that's the least of the tricks Zophar has up his sleeve. Even if, as you say, my ability to generate mana—which I'm still not certain I believe in—will grow with time, it'll be centuries before I'm able to challenge him. I don't know about you, but I don't want Zophar loose on Lunar for that long." I looked pointedly out over the frozen land below. 

Lucia licked her lips. "There is . . . a procedure. It was used twice during the war, when one of the Dragons died while his successor was still in the egg. In theory, it could . . . accelerate your development . . . but the risks involved in using in on someone who is not truly a dragon are unknown. It could—" 

I held up a hand to stop her. "I can guess—the consequences of an error when performing a delicate magical operation on the mind or spirit are known in Vane." I'd even had the opportunity to observe them a few times: mindlessness, and madness in all its myriad interesting forms . . . "You realize that you would be risking creating a monster worse than Zophar ever was." 

"I don't think the risk is great," Lucia protested. "But it would be unfair to ask you to make a decision without knowing that it exists." 

I looked out the window again. _Dyne . . . no, there's no point in even asking that question, is there? I know what you would do. You always gave of yourself without stinting. How about a different one: Were you ever as afraid as I am, at this moment? I'm not even sure which frightens me more—the thought of being left a vegetable or worse by a failure, or the thought of what I'll become if we succeed . . ._

Outside, wind teased at the dried vegetation poking up out of the snow. It parted the louring clouds for an instant, and I saw . . . no, not the sun, but a green globe that I had previously seen as such only in ancient records from the Mechanical Age. 

Lunar. 

I scratched gently behind Azure's ears, and she looked up at me questioningly. 

"There really isn't any choice, is there?" I said. "Let's get this over with before I change my mind." 

"But Master—" 

"Ghaleon—" 

"Hush, both of you." Meloth obeyed, but Azure still looked rebellious. She began to say something else, but I cut her off. "I've had a much longer life than I ever had a right to expect, considering the risks I've taken with it. If this turns out to be my last gamble . . . I'll be content." 

"But . . ." Azure visibly bit back what she was going to say. "No, I'll talk to you . . . after." 

"As you say." I lifted her out of my lap and set her gently aside, then rose to my feet . . . and drew my sword. "Nall." I reversed the blade, offering him the hilt. "If the worst happens . . . finish it before I can recover well enough to act. I don't want to be the cause of the destruction of everything . . . not anymore. And you're the only one here I trust to act without hesitation." 

The White Dragon swallowed and reached out to heft the violet-black weapon gingerly. "I understand." 

"Good. As for the rest of you . . . there will be less risk if we minimize the audience." I gave Meloth a meaningful look. 

"Um, Ruby . . . Azure? I think maybe we should go back downstairs." 

Ruby immediately flitted to his shoulder, but Azure, mulishly, remained where she was. 

"Azure—" I began. 

"I'm not going anywhere," the Blue Dragon snapped. Then, more softly, "You should have at least one friend present." 

Couldn't she see that that was exactly what I didn't want? But her tiny flying-cat body was tense and bristling, enough so to make me wonder if she wouldn't fight me if I tried to move her bodily. 

I sighed, and surrendered. "I trust you know better than to interfere." 

"Do I look stupid to you? I . . . I don't want . . ." Her sharp, high-pitched voice faltered. "I don't want to be the cause of anything going wrong." 

"Fair enough. As for you, boy . . ." I said to Meloth, who was still standing in the doorway with Ruby on his shoulder. 

"We'll . . . see you downstairs, Master." 

I waited until I heard the door close at the foot of the stairs before turning to Lucia. "What do I need to do?" 

"Nothing," she replied. "This requires only me to act." 

"I suppose an unhatched dragon egg could scarcely be an active participant in anything," I said as she walked over to stand in front of me. 

Lucia merely smiled and reached up to place her fingers on my temples. 

She spoke an unfamiliar keyword, and I felt a tremor run through my body. A second word created a stabbing pain behind my eyes, and with the third, I could feel something inside me tearing agonizingly. I broke out in a sweat, my hands clenched into fists, and concentrated on not fighting the magic— not fighting her. 

The effort turned out to be . . . unnecessary, because the fourth word stole my consciousness in a burst of white fire and sent me crashing to the ground. Truth be told, I don't actually remember landing—the world vanished before that.


	16. Chapter 16

I woke with my head pillowed on something warm and, if not precisely comfortable, at least softer than stone— Azure's human form's lap, I discovered as I opened my eyes. I immediately regretted that, as even the dim, reddish light now flooding the tower room sent stabbing pains through a head that felt swollen to twice its normal size. 

"How do you feel?" the Blue Dragon asked softly. 

"Like Lucia pried the top of my skull off with an icepick," I grumbled. "I'm surprised she wasn't killed by her previous victims. How long have I been unconscious?" 

"Five or six hours. The sun's just going down." 

"The others . . ." 

"Downstairs. Nall left your sword—it's propped against the wall beside the door." 

I sat up very slowly, using both hands to keep my head from falling off. "I take it that the mana here is too thin for any useful healing spells." 

"Lucia forbade me to cast anything on you—she said that what she'd done amounted to ripping open a part of your mind, and a healing spell might close it up again." She steadied me with an arm around my shoulders. 

"Barren Earth," I grumbled, but the pain already did seem to be dissipating just a little. 

"I just hope that whatever she did to you accomplished something," Azure added. 

"Other than giving me a headache, you mean? I'm damned if I know," I admitted. "Except for the pain, I don't feel any different . . . but then, I was never aware of generating mana in the first place, so there's no reason that I should be able to tell how much of it I'm producing. I can't even think of a useful experiment to test it—slitting my throat and seeing how long it takes for me to come back this time might work, but completely aside from the fact that dying hurts, I can't risk being out of commission for several centuries. There are too many things I want to do here and now." Just in time, I stopped myself from shaking my head. Apparently, at some point, the knowledge that I was going to keep coming back to life had just . . . settled into place. 

"I'm glad," Azure said. Her left hand closed on mine, and squeezed gently. 

I cleared my throat. "In any case, we should go downstairs—I don't know about you, but I don't find the floor here so comfortable that I want to linger." 

"If you think you're ready." 

I levered myself to my feet with one hand on her shoulder and the other holding my head, then shuffled a few paces toward the door, grabbed my sword, and somehow manoeuvred it back into its scabbard. Then I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and forced myself to stride forward into the hallway at my accustomed pace, without holding my head. 

"You don't need to kill yourself trying to look strong," Azure said as she fell into step beside me. 

"Not right now, perhaps," I admitted—and why did I trust her so? "But we'll be returning to Lunar soon, and I don't want to let Zophar see me looking vulnerable. I need the practice." And then there was Nall, who, regardless of any bond of blood, probably wouldn't shed any tears if my head were to fall off and roll across the floor to fetch up against his feet. 

Descending the stairs was hellish, with every step sending a jolt straight to the head that I forced myself to hold high. When we reached the bottom, I had to let Azure open the door for me while I did my best to bring the pain back under control by sheer force of will. 

"You're alive." Nall sounded almost disappointed. 

"I told you he was," Azure snapped back. 

I touched her hand gently, a warning, and heard a soft snicker which I thought came from Ruby. 

"Master . . ." 

I sighed. "What is it, boy?" 

"Um, I'm just glad you're all right, okay?" the young beastman said in a sulky tone. His face was set in lines to match, but his eyes . . . all but glowed. 

I sighed again, wondering if I would ever fully be able to fathom how Meloth saw me. 

"Ghaleon." 

I turned my head . . . and ended up biting the tip of my tongue to keep myself from cursing when I discovered just how good an idea that wasn't. 

"Lucia," I managed to say, although at first I was barely able to divert enough of my attention in her direction to make out that she was standing in front of the crystal at the center of the room. When my vision had cleared a bit, I noticed that she was biting her lip. 

"I'm not certain how wise this is," she admitted, frowning deeply, "but I cannot . . . My responsibility is the Blue Star. It is beyond my capacity to safeguard Lunar as well, especially if Zophar keeps returning every few centuries. I had hoped . . . but it appears that even the power of humanity is simply not that strong." She glanced back over her shoulder at the glowing crystal, and at Hiro, floating within it, and her face twisted so that, for a moment, it almost looked like she was going to burst into tears. Then her expression smoothed over, and she turned back to me. "Althena believed that Lunar no longer needed its god, but without her, your world is vulnerable to such as Zophar, and I cannot believe that that is what she wanted. Another must take up her burden, and you are the first I have found who might be able to shoulder such a responsibility. Ghaleon, son of Quark . . . In the name of my sister, Althena, I place the world of Lunar in your hands. Guard it in her place until the time comes." 

" _What?!_ " 

"That's insane!" Ruby's fur was standing on end, and it looked like Nall's hair was trying to do the same—more than usual, I mean. 

As for me, the irony was so powerful that I couldn't even laugh. Instead, I stood frozen in the middle of the room for what seemed like forever. 

Then, finally, I found my voice. "When Nall first knew me, I would have accepted that offer immediately. Now I know better. I still believe Althena to have been fallible, and even—occasionally—glaringly wrong, but I am far, far worse. I am beyond merely fallible: I have an active talent for self- deception. For the sake of Lunar, Lucia, _don't do this_. I beg you." 

"I'm surprised you even know the word," Nall muttered. 

"Don't be silly," Ruby whispered back to him. "Every good villain has to be able to tell people to beg for mercy." 

I kept my eyes on Lucia, who had the courtesy to do the same for me. 

"In truth, I am doing very little," she said. "By opening you to your true power, I have already placed the fate of Lunar in your hands. Now I but acknowledge what I have done. And . . ." 

"And?" I was forced to prompt when she seemed disinclined to continue. 

"If Althena and I have made errors, it has been because we did not understand mortality—the human condition— nearly as well as we thought we did. That is not a problem that you will have." 

_Isn't it? I'm already having a hard time remembering what it really means to be afraid of death . . . and there are other aspects of being . . . human . . . that I've been trying desperately to forget._

"So the only part of this that I'm allowed to decide is whether to use that power, and the authority that goes with it, or not," I said tiredly. "Perhaps it's just as well that you pointed that out to me." _In time, I may even stop hating you for it._

_I'm going to have to cling to your memory even harder now, aren't I, Dyne? If I can't trust myself, then you're all that's left._

"Ghaleon . . ." Azure sighed. "Look, we're all tired, and I think you're in more pain than you're willing to admit, even to me. Don't overthink things right now. You'll feel better after you've had a proper rest." 

Even I wasn't sure whether I meant my shrug to be denial or acknowledgement—I did still feel like someone had driven an icepick through my skull. 

"We probably should head back—I doubt it's wise to leave Lunar without its dragons for too long," Nall said. 

"You are correct in that," Lucia said. "Farewell, all of you. And, Ghaleon . . . I wish you success." 

_Up to a point, I'm sure,_ I thought grimly, but what I said was, "Until we meet again, then, Princess of the Blue Star." 

Then it was back to the hell of the stairs that led to the gate. Despite my earlier wishful thinking, my headache wasn't really abating very much, and it took tremendous force of will for me to keep myself from whimpering with every step. Twice, due to my inability to pay attention to the stairs themselves, I almost lost my balance, but both times, Azure's arm was suddenly there to steady me. And then when we came to the crystal, and I stepped through . . . 

The transfer had been instantaneous the first time, but not so now. I was submerged in a madness of darkness and coloured light, forces trying to pull me in different directions . . . and familiar laughter. 

_Zophar!_ The word couldn't seem to leave my lips here—did I even have a body? 

I shaped another word, the keyword of a Nitro Dagger spell, and the response was . . . unexpected. 

Any experienced mage can tell how much of his magic he's putting into a given spell as he casts it. I knew how much _should_ have gone into my favourite ice-attack spell . . . and it was far less than what tore through me now in a great gout, searing my mind with such agony that after the first split second, I went numb, beyond pain. Instead of becoming ice darts, the spell spread out around me as a sphere of cold blue- white light that drove all the other lights away . . . but maybe that was just a phenomenon of this place. 

One of the various forces pulling at me picked that moment to give a particularly vicious yank, drawing me out of that place. I crashed to the ground amid the smell of leaf mold, and blacked out.


	17. Chapter 17

"Drink," prompted a voice, but there was something wrong with the word. I forced my eyes open, but all I could see was blurs—some drab brown or grey, others flesh-coloured. 

"Drink, you fool," the voice repeated, and the rim of a cup was pressed against my lips. I allowed a little of the liquid inside to trickle into my mouth . . . and almost spat it out again. It was horribly bitter . . . which, my mind provided tardily, meant that it probably _wasn't_ poison, which the person leaning over me would surely have made at least some attempt to disguise. So I forced myself to swallow, and then to repeat the process several times. Slowly, my vision began to clear, and the white-fire pain in my head damped itself down to a moderate ache. 

I was lying on a rough cot in what looked like the loft of a small house, one of the three-room stone-and-wood type common in farming villages. My armour was piled haphazardly near the foot of the bed, with my sword propped against it. 

There wasn't a dragon to be seen, not even in flying cat form. 

The woman seated on a stool beside the cot nodded in satisfaction as I first propped myself up on my elbows, then, cautiously, sat up. My initial impression was of a blonde human in early middle age, with streaks of grey in her hair and crow's feet at the corners of her eyes . . . but then I noted the crimson markings on the backs of her hands and the pointed ears, and realized that she was of the Vile Tribe, and probably quite ancient. When she'd told me to drink, the words hadn't sounded quite right because she'd been speaking the old language of the Tribe, rather than the common tongue of Lunar. 

"I thank you for your care," I said slowly in the same language, knowing that my accent hadn't improved in the years since I had last spoken it. "Of your courtesy, where am I, and how long have I been unconscious?" 

"So it has manners to go with its foolishness." She half-smiled, but didn't look up from the piece of mending in her lap. "This is the village of Adirai. The nearest town of any size is Nota, to the north." 

Nota. That put me not far from the ancient ruin that held my pixie garden. I began to push the blankets covering me back, preparing to swing my legs over the side of the cot, but a firm shove against my chest knocked me back against the pillows at the head of the bed. 

"You've no business being up and around," the woman said severely, her mending now lying on the floor beside the stool. "In all my years as a healer, I've never seen such a case of mana burn—not even when we first left the Frontier and the younglings were acting foolish." 

Mana burn was a form of internal damage to the portions of the mind that shaped spells, and was normally caused by drawing more magical energy than one could truly handle. In my case, I suspected that I'd just compounded whatever Lucia had done to me by trying to cast that Nitro Dagger too soon afterwards. Fortunately, it's also quick to heal—a few days at the most, _if_ one can refrain from spellcasting. 

_Barren Earth._ It was more of a snarl than a thought. Without magic, I had no way of contacting anyone outside this village, and no way of getting back to Vane except my own two feet, which meant getting started as soon as possible. 

"I have business that won't wait," I snapped. 

She chuckled. "And now you're going to tell me that the fate of Lunar is hanging in the balance, and if you don't get back to Vane _right now_ , the world is going to end. Younglings like you have no sense of proportion." 

How had she known . . . ? Oh, of course—my master's ring was still on my finger, the glowing crest drawing attention to itself even in this well-lit room. I decided to tell her some of the truth. "I'm the Premier of the Vane Guild. The Guildmistress was murdered recently, and circumstances have forced me to leave the city in the hands of a twelve-year-old girl, a human who might die of old age at any moment . . . and a traitor. I have to get back as soon as possible." There—hopefully that would explain my sense of urgency. 

The woman sitting beside my bed frowned. "Last I checked, young Altus was the Magic Guild Premier." 

"He was. I challenged him for the title—and won," I explained briefly. 

"Huh. And if you're the greatest mage on Lunar, what in hell were you doing to get yourself mana-burned?" 

"Tangling with a god and a goddess." 

The aging woman snorted. "Well, I suppose that's as believable as anything else you've said so far. Do you have a name, or am I supposed to call you 'Lord Premier'?" 

I gave her an irritated glare. "You can call me 'Galin' if the other is too much of a burden for you." Better not to be 'Ghaleon' here, I suspected. "You still haven't told me how long I was out." 

"Showing your true colours at last, I see. I haven't told you because I don't know. My grandson found you yesterday in the middle of a patch of octoplants—he said they seemed to be trying to get up the courage to turn you into fertilizer. Took him quite a while to get you back here." 

Now it was my turn to snort. _So now I terrify half-vegetable monsters even while unconscious—not exactly one of my greater ambitions in life._

"Is there any way I can at least send a message back to Vane?" I asked. "There are people who'll be wondering where I am." Azure and Meloth would, anyway. Hopefully one of them would have the wit to check in. 

"We can ask my grandson to carry one for you, but by the time it gets there, you might be well enough to teleport yourself back." She must have seen the expression that crossed my face when she said that, because she added, "Best resign yourself to resting here for a few days, among your own people, young Galin. The less you fret, the quicker you'll heal." 

"Perhaps," I said. "However, I won't be chained to this bed like an invalid. Getting up and moving around won't make my condition any worse, and you know it. If I promise to be a good little boy and take my medicine whenever you tell me to, will you stop arguing with me about that?" 

She snorted again. "Do you think I'm going to trust you?" 

"I don't think I'm going to give you a choice," I said evenly. 

"Oh, all right, then. I wash my hands of you. Do whatever you want—just get back here when your headache starts to get worse, or you're going to regret it." 

This time, when I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, she didn't try to stop me. I pulled my boots on, then gave the pile of metal at the foot of the narrow cot an irritated glare. In the end, I took only my sword. 

"Do you have a name?" I asked abruptly, on the grounds that I might need to get directions to find my way back here at some point. 

The woman chuckled. "If that's your way of saying my manners are even more appalling than yours, young Galin, well, you're probably right. I'm Tezaria Elet-mar-Kandith— everyone in this village knows me." 

I raised my eyebrows—even two thousand years ago, most members of the Vile Tribe hadn't bothered introducing themselves formally with the joined maternal line names of both their parents. Tezaria scowled at me. 

"We're old-fashioned here, youngling. Now go if you're going, and leave an old woman to her mending." 

"Not so old as all that, I think," I said as I discovered that the only access to the loft was via a narrow ladder—she had to have levitated me to get me up there. 

"Ha! There aren't many of us left now who remember the Frontier, and I was twenty-eight when we finally received the freedom of the Green Earth. I may be the oldest living creature on Lunar." 

_Second-oldest,_ I thought, but didn't say. _No, third-oldest—forgot about the Star Dragon._

Climbing down the ladder placed me in a larger-than- usual farmhouse kitchen, and several of the bunches of herbs that hung down on long strings from the ceiling beams brushed my hair as I headed for the open back door. Stepping outside, I stood in the middle of Tezaria's herb patch and just looked around. 

_It's all very . . . domestic,_ I thought. Or perhaps _rustic_ was the word I was looking for. 

Adirai was a collection of somewhere between a dozen and twenty buildings, situated at the edge of a forest. Houses, a slightly larger building with the universal sign used by general stores everywhere on Lunar dangling outside, a small smithy beside the stream that bounded the village to what I thought was the west, and a long, low building that, judging by the enclosures flanking it, was probably a communal livestock barn. An old, grey-muzzled dog was asleep on the porch of the house next door to Tezaria's, and there were chickens everywhere. At first glance, it looked like any other farming village . . . until you saw the people. The big, bald fellow with the blue skin and pointed ears, for instance, who was leaning against the fence of one of the livestock corrals, couldn't possibly have belonged in any human settlement. And that group of young children who were chasing each other through the dust of the main street, startling the chickens, included representatives of five of the six Vile Tribe subraces I was familiar with—there were no pixies, but then they'd always been rare. 

_So this is how they've chosen to live, now that they have the freedom of the Green Earth again,_ I thought. Xenobia would have been livid to see them turned into mere peasants—she'd always been a big believer in the high, noble, and, to my mind, distinctly grim traditions of her people—but I found it . . . oddly reassuring. It proved that even the oldest grudges, the most powerful hatreds, could be brought to an end. 

I felt a tug on my belt, and looked down to see a child—or at least, I thought it was a child, although I'd almost never seen any of the one-eyed, furred subspecies outside their cocoons in the old days on the Frontier and didn't know how big the adults grew to be—tugging at my sword. Gently, I detached his—her?—hands from the scabbard. 

"That really isn't a good idea," I said. "Some adventurers get angry when you touch their weapons without asking first." 

"I'm sorry, sir—she's only four, and doesn't understand the common tongue very well yet." The figure that emerged from the house with the dog dozing on the porch wasn't much bigger than the four-year-old, and I wasn't sure if it was an older child or an adult. I was beginning to regret that as the Magic Emperor, I'd never been much interested in the Vile Tribe subspecies who couldn't survive long enough unaided in the Frontier to work the mines for me. 

"Everyone here really does use the old tongue for day- to-day communication, then," I said, switching languages, as the older furred being descended from the porch to pick up the little girl. "Interesting." 

When I received no reply, I shrugged and strolled off the explore Adirai a bit, and soon discovered that I'd missed one of its more significant features, mostly because the store had been in the way. 

On its far side, at what I thought had probably been the original center of the village, the dusty street suddenly gained cobblestone pavement and opened up into a square—a square with a statue at the center. Three figures stood together, sharing a common base . . . and I recognized them all, although I hadn't seen any of them in years. 

On the left, Xenobia, in the rather scanty outfit she'd called her "work clothes". 

On the right, Phacia, wearing something much more demure. 

And in the center . . . Well, I'd almost allowed myself to forget what that armour looked like, since most of the time I'd been wearing it rather than staring at it from the outside, but seeing it immortalized in stone brought the memories flooding back, and I smiled thinly at Magic Emperor Ghaleon. 

The pedestal on which they stood had deep niches carved in the front, and inside those, an assortment of objects could be seen—flowers, a pile of oatcakes displayed on a handkerchief, a small wooden carving . . . _Are those offerings?_

"I told you we hadn't forgotten," said a quiet voice from behind me, and I whirled, hand falling to my sword, to confront . . . Altus? "There's an Althena statue standing back-to- back with them, but this is where everyone in the village does their real worship. We truly do believe we owe you more than we can ever repay, Lord Ghaleon." 

"What are you doing here?" I asked, releasing the sword hilt. "I believe I left orders that you be kept under guard." 

Altus gave me a sweet, tired smile. "You assigned me to find out who had murdered poor Milia, remember? When the dragons came back with the news that Zaile had been responsible, there didn't seem to be much point to continuing the investigation, so I asked Ludus and Lira if I could leave Vane for a little while. They agreed. I came to Adirai because . . . well, this is where my roots are, for all that I was born in Meribia—my mother even moved back here after my father died. I wanted some quiet time to think, and come to terms with everything that's happened over the past week or so. The last thing I ever expected was to find you here." 

"The dragons are all right, then," I said. 

Altus' smile widened, became more genuine. "Well, I don't know about 'all right', exactly—Azure is nearly beside herself with worry, and Nall spent the hour or so he was actually in Vane pacing and sort of growling to himself—but they're uninjured. So is your apprentice, although he's nearly as worried about you as Azure." 

"I really don't understand why Azure is so interested in me." It was meant to be a statement of fact, but it came out sounding . . . plaintive. 

"You don't? Poor Zaile." 

"What do you mean?" 

"The best man won without even being aware there was a contest going on." 

Tardily, I put two and two together and came up with sixteen, and suddenly a dozen little things, from Azure's sudden development of a stutter when we'd been talking in that tower room on the Blue Star to the way she'd reacted with disproportionate rage to Ruby's teasing in the hot springs valley, all made sense. "You're saying that the Blue Dragon of Althena . . . is in love with me." 

"She does seem to be showing all the symptoms, don't you think?" Altus was now outright grinning. 

I, in the meanwhile, was mostly confused. Azure was . . . but then how did I feel about her? The idea of being romantically involved with a blue flying cat was ridiculous on the face of it. Wasn't it? _I don't have the time or the energy to think about this now._

"And anyway, it isn't as though she has a lot of male dragons to choose from," Altus added, more soberly. "Nall's already . . . attached, and Azure has made it clear to everyone that she thinks of Zaile as a big brother, nothing more. That leaves you, and, I suppose, Zophar." 

I grimaced. "They told you, then." 

"Azure . . . was kind enough to think that I should know." Altus looked away and down. _Ah. Kind enough to tell him that there was no way he could get his brother back. I see._ "In a way, it seems almost appropriate—that our greatest hero should be something amazing, and yet . . . one of us." He turned his head, apparently considering the statue at the square's center. "We're going to have to consider carving a new likeness, I guess. Of those who escaped the Frontier, the only one who knew you at all well was Phacia, and she . . ." 

" . . . couldn't even draw a decent stick figure, much less model anything in three dimensions," I finished, smiling at the memory. "But no, leave it as it is. It allows me a certain amount of . . . plausible deniability." 

"You're not comfortable being a god." 

My smile turned wry. "Ironic, isn't it? But the truth is that I didn't really know what I wanted back then. I think I might even have been looking for death—the death that, it turns out, I will never find." 

"That has to—" Altus began to say. Then he flinched and glanced upward as a sudden shadow darkened the sun. "What in the Bitch-Goddess' name . . . ?" 

I looked up as well, just as a huge, winged silhouette recrossed the sky above us. "Barren Earth! I think it's your friend Zaile." 

"Then Zophar has already—but it hasn't even been a full day yet!" 

"We can't afford to waste too much time thinking about it," I said harshly. "Chances are he's after me. I have to get out of town, or there's going to be one hell of a lot of collateral damage." Especially since I wasn't going to be able to get off more than one spell before the mana burn knocked me out, so I was going to have to cast the most powerful attack in my arsenal immediately, before Zaile could damp the area. 

Altus grabbed my elbow, and the world staggered, then settled: a teleport. 

"Warn me next time," I growled, glancing around. We were standing on a rocky upthrust in the middle of what seemed to be a fallow field—good. I drew my sword, just in case. "Now get out of here." 

The blond ex-Premier shook his head. "I didn't get a chance to prove myself by finding Milia's murderer—please let me help you with this instead, Lord Ghaleon. Besides, I'm in better shape than you are, I suspect." 

I gave him a long, thoughtful look—perhaps I _could_ trust him not to stab me in the back. "Very well. You probably know that Zaile is a master mage as well as a dragon and . . . whatever Zophar has made of him. You may even be familiar with his favourite magic negation spell. _Don't let him cast it._ Neither of us stands a chance of taking out a full-grown dragon in a physical fight." 

Altus nodded . . . or at least, I think he did. Because it was at that moment that a shadow crossed the sun again, and then began to grow as its owner dropped out of the sky toward us. Then it reached the ground, and Altus drew in a pained breath. 

"Oh, Zaile . . ." 

I was inclined to agree with the observation. Zaile's body was no longer entirely flesh and blood—not only had part of his left wing, presumably corresponding to the hand he had left behind in the Star Dragon Tower, been replaced with some kind of translucent membrane stretched over metal struts, but a good portion of his head now displayed the sheen of a familiar metal/stone substance. _That must itch like hell._

One golden eye, surrounded by a sea of ugly violet- grey, fixed itself on us, and Zaile spoke, thick-tongued. "Sorry. Can't control—ah!" It was more of a roar than a syllable, really, and I could see the signs of pain in the way his tail lashed and his head tilted back. 

"Complete your mission!" Zophar's voice snarled from the air. 

"Argh! No! Not if it means—" 

"Hold him," I said softly to Altus. "For as long as you can, in whatever way you can. I think that perhaps . . ." But I didn't finish the sentence. My mind was already too busy, searching back over the years, trying to remember a single page in a slender, crumbling book, one of the dozen or so in Xenobia's private library and the only one she herself had been unable to read. It hadn't taken long for me to realize that it was in code, but it had taken me more than two years to break it, and I never had finished the translation—Alex had interrupted me too soon. Nevertheless, I'd drawn some reward from it. The book had turned out to be a grimoire, full of ancient, unwieldy, amazingly powerful spells that didn't follow the rules of magic as I knew them and were resistant to my attempts at analysis and keyword extraction. It hadn't been until I'd overheard Lucia talking to Hiro and his friends on the roof of the ruin housing my pixie garden, a thousand years later, that I'd genuinely understood what that book had been. 

Holy magic. The spells given only to Althena and her sister Lucia. If I'd known, I doubt I would ever have dared my first, experimental castings . . . but now they might turn out to be our salvation, if I could remember them clearly enough. 

I sketched a symbol in a patch of loose earth with the toe of my boot—not that I understood what purpose it served, but I knew so little of this form of magic that I'd never been able to tell if any of the elements could be safely omitted—and haltingly began to chant as Altus, beside me, spoke the keyword of a barrier spell. Five phrases . . . six . . . then I must have mispronounced something, because I felt the still-delicate structure of the spell fall in on itself and disintegrate. I swore and began again, varying the emphasis and vowel length on what I thought had been the fatal word, and got that bit, only to have the spell fall apart again a moment later when I made another, different error. 

Zaile's tail slammed against Altus' barrier, and I saw it flicker. Knowing that we didn't have much time, I shifted my grip on my sword as I began again, and flexed my knees, ready to leap out of the way of the next blow when it came. Sure enough, a clawed forepaw came down, and the barrier gave. I sprang to the left, still chanting, and barely kept myself from breaking off with a curse when Zaile's blow obliterated my carefully-inscribed symbol. Well, perhaps it wouldn't matter. 

Altus spoke the keyword of an earth spell, but I suspected his heart wasn't in it, because the spear of rock that shot up in response went between Zaile's forefeet, not through one of them—or into his stomach. Granted, the tip of it did hit the Black Dragon on the nose and cause him to curse thickly and take a half-step back, but it wasn't nearly as long-lasting a distraction as some serious physical damage would have been. However, I didn't dare interrupt the complex and ancient spell I was casting to tell Altus so. 

Then Zaile breathed lightning. I couldn't see any way that I could get out of range, but at the same time I was damned if I was just going to stand where I was and endure, so I leapt straight at the Black Dragon, sword extended, and sank my blade deep into his shoulder. 

Zaile roared and instinctively rose on his hind legs, trying to throw me off, but I hung on to my weapon grimly. Then, as his head whipped around and he began to inhale, I brought my foot up and pushed off, catapulting myself away from him. Somehow, through all that, I managed to maintain the chant, restarting it after every error, although it was barely more than a whisper through gritted teeth as I hit the ground and rolled awkwardly, my sword-arm outflung so that I wouldn't impale myself. 

I ended the roll on my knees—better than I'd expected, given how out-of-practice I was—and looked around quickly for Altus as I used my sword to lever myself to my feet. It didn't take me all that long to find him, because he suddenly shouted out another keyword—a paralysis spell—and drew my eye to him where he was crouched on the other side of Zaile's body. Zaile shrugged the spell off within seconds, but Altus repeated it . . . and went on doing so, making the Black Dragon look like he was trying to move through a vat of honey that was clinging, thick and viscous, to his limbs. Altus' face was white, and I thought he might even be crying. I just hoped that repeating the keyword so often didn't make it degenerate into meaningless noise in his mind—if it did, it would lose its effectiveness. 

I continued to chant, using the tip of my sword to scratch the symbol that Zaile's earlier attack had obliterated into the clotted earth on which I stood. I was nearing the end of the spell now, having won past all the difficult passages that had sabotaged my earlier attempts, and I could feel a growing ache inside my head. The lines of the symbol were beginning to glow when I felt something begin to trickle from my nose. I swiped irritably at my face with the back of my free hand, and discovered, to my disquiet, that it was blood. 

_Only a little longer,_ I told myself, wishing for the first time in a very long time that I still had something to pray to. _Just three more words._ Two. One . . . 

I staggered and made a soft, pained noise as the magic moved through me, burning like liquid fire. Ah, Althena, so _much_ . . . even the Nitro Dagger I'd cast in the void hadn't drawn such a volume of power, probably because I'd overloaded that spell even as I'd been casting it. But the holy spells were intended to channel everything their caster had to give, and more. I fell to one knee, choking on my own blood, as the world around me was flooded with blue light . . . 

. . . but . . . 

The magic was jostling at me. At _me_ , not at Zaile, its target. Lacking even the energy to swear, I tried to redirect it, but the spell had a mind of its own. Quiet . . . warmth . . . 

_That's three times in twenty-four hours,_ I thought hazily as the world started to go dark. _Even if Zaile doesn't kill me, I'm never going to be able to live this down._


	18. Chapter 18

This time, the division between consciousness and the lack thereof was abrupt. I blinked and looked up at the circle of faces. I'd been expecting to see Altus and the old woman Tezaria if I woke up at all, and Azure and Meloth had been likely enough as well if I'd been out long enough for Altus to have time to fetch them, but those four only made up half the circle. Beside Meloth stood Lira, her fingers twined with his. My unlikely half-brother the White Dragon had positioned himself between Altus and Azure, with Ruby hovering above him. And at the foot of the narrow bed . . . 

"Zaile." He wore the same form as he had in the Star Dragon Tower, except that he was one-handed and had a rather sheepish expression on his face. I sat up and directed my gaze at Altus. "What happened after I lost consciousness?" 

"Always in such a hurry," Tezaria said. " _We_ should be the ones asking what happening. You should be dead." 

"Again?" I muttered. Azure must have caught it, because she smiled. 

"Lord Ghaleon, this is no laughing matter," Altus said. "Casting anything more than a light spell on top of such a severe mana burn—and if I'd known what shape you were really in, I would have found some way to stop you from fighting Zaile— should have killed you. You know as well as I do that internal bleeding is a terminal sign. But now there isn't anything wrong with you—even the bruises that Tezaria says you had are gone— and Zaile is . . ." 

I chuckled in response to his frown. "Tell me what you saw, and then I'll tell you what I think happened." 

Altus' frown deepened, but he said, "There was this flash of blue light, and then I found both you and Zaile lying out cold at the center of a circle of grass and wildflowers—in the middle of a plowed field, yet. You had blood all over your face, but no sign of actual injuries. And the things Zophar had done to Zaile were gone without a trace . . . well, except for the hand, but even that looked like an old injury that had been healed for a long time. Fortunately, Zaile woke up first—there's no way I could have gotten you back here alone. Did you know that you're pretty damned heavy, by the way?" 

I ignored the rhetorical question. "The field as well . . . that spell must have been even more unfocussed than I thought. I'll have to try another analysis on it when I have the time. Maybe there's been some technique developped in the past few centuries that will help me make sense of it . . . or perhaps it's the lack of refinement in the spell itself that lets it channel so much power . . ." 

"Lord Ghaleon, _please_ ," Zaile said. "I _need_ to know what that spell was. The moment you finished casting it, Zophar screamed inside my head . . . you frightened him unbelievably. We're going to need that magic to take the fight to him." 

My amusement faded. "Unfortunately, I don't think that Lucia and Althena and all the dragons combined would be able to cast that spell with enough force to deal with Zophar, since it would have to be used on literally the entire universe. Its intent is both simple and complex: It puts things back the way they're supposed to be, according to some cosmic definition of _supposed to_ that I must admit I don't entirely understand. I was gambling that you weren't _supposed to_ belong to Zophar. Apparently the spillover from the undirected spell also thought I was _supposed to_ be uninjured and the field around us was _supposed to_ be grassland. I suspect that the universe is also not _supposed to_ contain a Zophar, but I don't see how we can make use of that fact—especially since, if it had been likely to work, Althena would have tried it instead of nearly destroying the Blue Star to get rid of him." 

"It was another holy spell, wasn't it?" Ruby asked. "Like the ones you used to protect the pixie garden." 

I nodded. "Unfortunately, while I do know a few other holy spells, I can't see how any of them would apply to the situation with Zophar—they're mostly for protection and purification. I think I may even know the one that Althena used to lock him away originally." 

"That might help," Azure said. 

"Only if the circumstances are exactly right, I'm afraid. We'd need to have him embodied—or at least localized in some way—but weakened. It's a very specific spell," I explained. 

"Well, we may get the 'embodied' part sooner than we bargained for," Zaile said grimly. "From the time that he took me from the Star Tower to the point when you broke me loose, Zophar was feeding off me—off the mana that I generate. There was nothing I could do to stop him." He shuddered. "I don't know how you managed to endure having that happen to you for eight years—one _day_ was bad enough." 

"I allowed myself to stay in his power because I had a purpose that required it," I said. "You were just a victim." But my hand rose to scrub at my face, and I had to force it down into my lap again. "I do wish I knew how much mana I was generating at the time, though, and how much of that he was skimming off . . . and how eight years of that would compare to one day's total production from a mature dragon. Even knowing exactly how much mana it takes for a demi-dragon to recreate his body after death would help—clearly, it's a lot or it wouldn't have taken me centuries both times, but that isn't exactly a precise measurement." 

" _Is_ there a precise way to measure mana?" Meloth asked curiously, speaking up for the first time. 

That almost got a smile from Altus. "No—but I think we're going to have to invent one. Maybe you'll take up that line of research yourself." 

"We're getting sidetracked," Nall said. 

"Indeed," I agreed . . . but for me, it had been a useful sidetrack. A plan was beginning to crystallize inside my head. It was audacious to the point of insanity, and I knew none of the others were going to approve it . . . but this wouldn't be the first time I had deceived my allies. "We have an asset that we haven't developed fully—you four. According to my understanding, the Dragons of Althena don't have access to their full power without a Dragonmaster." 

"Pretty much," Nall admitted. "Although it's more like the Dragonmaster can access parts of our power that we can't use ourselves." 

"Hmph. Is there anyone here that you could approve for the position?" I had a feeling that I knew what he was going to say, but I wanted to hear it from Nall himself. 

"Wha—Um. Meloth, maybe, if he passed the trials. Sorry." Nall was refusing to meet my eyes again. 

Meloth made a squeaky noise that sounded very odd coming from a strapping young beastman. " _Me?_ " 

I sighed. "I'm not eligible, boy, and Altus was in Zophar's power too recently to make it safe to place such power in his hands. That doesn't leave very many choices." 

"Um." Meloth's eyes were round as saucers. Then he seemed to notice that Lira was beaming at him, swallowed a couple of times, and got himself under control. "Okay, what do I have to do?" 

"Well—" Nall began. 

I overrode him. "Normally, you would have to pass tests set by each of the Four Dragons, but I think we can waive that this time—can't we, _dear_ brother?" 

The White Dragon glared at me, but said, "Unfortunately, you probably can order us to do that—Althena would have been able to." Then, suddenly, he grinned. "And besides, keeping up with—and _putting_ up with—you is a more severe test than I would ever have set this kid. Here, Mel, give me your hands for a second." 

The young beastman disentangled his fingers from Lira's and extended both hands to Nall, who cupped his own around them—with some difficulty, since Meloth had huge hands that he hadn't quite grown into yet, and Nall's chosen human form wasn't very big. 

"Receive the power of the White Dragon of Althena," Nall intoned, and for a moment, their clasped hands glowed white. "And there you go, kid." 

Meloth stared at his hands as Nall released them. "That's _it_?" 

Azure grinned. "Kind of disappointing, isn't it?" 

"Yeah, kind of—oh. That's weird. I never learned a spell like that—especially not one that powerful—" 

"Each dragon's blessing gives you a spell," I explained. "One you'd be able to cast even if you weren't a mage—Dyne was horrible at any magic other than the dragon spells, even though he had a moderate earth talent." 

"Oh." Suddenly, Meloth grinned incandescently—I suppose that after such a long time spent struggling to develop his magic, the idea of spells he could learn without any effort was an attractive one, in its way. 

"I'm next," Azure said, grabbing his hands. "First time I've ever made a Dragonmaster. Okay, Mel, receive the power of the Blue Dragon of Althena." Blue glow. 

I'd expected Ruby to be next, but instead it was Zaile who offered his hand to the young beastman. 

"I never thought I'd do this for anyone," the dragon said, "but I suppose that, in the end, I'm not as good at fighting my own nature as I thought I was. Receive the power of the Black Dragon of Althena." The glow this created wasn't really black, however—more of a deep purple. 

Ruby fluttered over behind Nall and changed into her human form, but for several moments she just stood there, head bowed. "This feels an awful lot like I'm betraying him, you know. There aren't supposed to be two Dragonmasters." 

"Actually, it's happened a few times before," I said. "This won't do anything to harm your precious Hiro." 

"Not exactly an elegant way of putting it," Nall said, glaring at me, "but he's right, Ruby. Just do it. Everything will be fine." 

"All right," the Red Dragon said slowly, and extended her hands. Meloth hesitated for a moment before placing his palm down across them. "Receive the power of the Red Dragon of Althena." 

This time, the response was less of a glow and more of a flash, and Meloth shook his head as though trying to clear it. "That feels . . . I don't know. Guess I'll get used to it." He looked from dragon to dragon. "So does this mean I can give you orders?" 

"Sort of," Nall said, looking down. 

"Hmm. Well, then. Zaile, I order you to study human magic." 

" _What?_ " Nall's shout just about raised the rafters. 

I chuckled. "If it matters, I hereby abolish Althena's Laws as they pertain to dragons. Both of them," I added, giving Azure a sharp look. "Unlike the Goddess, I am not afraid of you." 

"That's one hell of an assertion," Nall said. 

I raised my eyebrows. "Do I have to prove it to you again? But then, you said you were tired of aura-stripping." Nall and Ruby both visibly winced. "Now get out, all of you. I'll join you outside presently. We need to get back to Vane." 

"Barren Earth, you're high-handed, _Lord Ghaleon_ ," Tezaria said. "Did it ever occur to you to ask your doctor if you could get up?" 

Calmly, I spoke the keyword of a light spell, and the magic moved within me as it always had before Lucia's interference—painlessly, and in just the amount required to produce a globe of foxfire resting in the palm of my hand. "As I'm not ill, I can't see that I require a doctor," I said evenly. 

The old woman snorted. "Very well, I wash my hands of you. Lady Phacia always did say you were a stubborn, arrogant man, as well as a liar. I wish now that I'd paid more attention to her." 

"Sounds like Phacia had you well-pegged, _dear_ brother," Nall said with a nasty smile. "I always did think she was pretty sharp." 

"Out," I repeated sharply. "Or I _will_ strip you of your aura again, and damn the consequences." 

Nall rolled his eyes . . . but then he turned into a flying cat and dropped over the edge of the loft. Ruby followed suit. Zaile also changed form, but a good chunk of his left wing was missing. With a grimace, he leaped at Altus, and climbed the blonde ex-Premier's robe until he was sitting on his shoulder. Altus didn't seem to mind—perhaps they'd worked this out between the two of them while I'd been unconscious. 

Once the traffic jam at the ladder was over, I was . . . not quite alone. Tezaria still sat near the bed with her mending across her knees. I didn't bother glaring at her—even my manners weren't equal to the task of throwing an old woman out of her home just to salve my pride. I did glare at the blue flying cat who was now clinging to the foot of the bed, though. 

"Somebody has to be here to catch you if it turns out that you're not as healed as you think you are, and you fall over," Azure said tranquilly. 

"With you in that form, I'd squash you flat," I retorted as I tossed the blankets back. 

"I can change pretty fast," she said with a flying-cat smile. 

"Which still wouldn't necessarily be fast enough," I pointed out as I fastened my armour. 

"I'll take the chance." 

Tezaria, I noted, although she was pretending to mend the smock that lay in her lap, was covertly watching the two of us. I wondered what she thought of our conversation. _Not at all godlike, that's for certain._ Oddly, the thought was comforting. 

Azure perched on my shoulder as I climbed down the ladder rather than flying down on her own. I was beginning to think that I was going to need to glue a flying-cat perch to my armour—or perhaps a leather one with a separate shoulder harness would be better. _And I could sell the design to Altus,_ I thought whimsically. And indeed, when I stepped outside, Zaile was still clinging to Altus' shoulder, although Nall and Ruby had resumed their human forms. 

I gestured for everyone to gather 'round, then spoke the keyword of the teleportation spell myself—another test, like the light spell earlier. Reality shivered, and then we were in Vane . . . and I didn't feel the least drained. More evidence of what I was becoming . . . what I had already become. And yet, in some ways it mattered less than I would have thought it would. 

"Magic is not the same as a miracle," I murmured aloud, and ignored the way Azure looked at me. Miracles . . . could do anything. Magic, on the other hand, was limited—it couldn't truly bring back the dead, or change the inner nature of a creature that already existed . . . "Are there truly any gods?" Or were even Althena and Lucia just very powerful magicians? 

"Are you _sure_ Lucia didn't scramble your brain? Maybe just a little?" Azure whispered in my ear. 

I chuckled softly. "Perhaps I'll explain my train of thought to you in more detail sometime. If you care about my philosophical maunderings, that is." 

"I care about you," the Blue Dragon whispered back, sending a strange shiver through me. "But I have to admit, philosophy tends to put me to sleep. I leave that kind of thing to Nall and Zaile." 

"Nall never struck me as a philosopher." 

"Well, you and he have never exactly had the most wonderful relationship, have you?" 

"Master, what are you two whispering about?" Meloth asked interestedly. 

"The sort of boring things that people of our age tend to talk about," I said. 

"Oh. I thought maybe you were . . . um." The young beastman looked at Lira, and blushed. 

Had everyone known about Azure's feelings before I had? I wasn't even going to consider how _I_ felt, at this point . . . because I still wasn't sure. Azure was my . . . comrade. Confidante, strong arm to fight by my side . . . comfort, when the world had battered me too much to be borne. My friend. 

As Dyne had been. 

"Let's go inside before we attract an audience," I said, nodding in the direction of the looming Guild Headquarters building. 

I still had a plan to put forward, in disguised terms, after all. I wouldn't have the luxury of being able to spend time sorting out my feelings until after we defeated Zophar . . . assuming we could manage it, and I survived.


	19. Chapter 19

"We have to attract Zophar's attention," I said as I propped my sword against the desk. Someone had added a few more chairs to the furnishings in the Guildmistress' office while I'd been . . . occupied elsewhere, and everyone had been able to seat themselves this time, including Ludus, who'd attached himself to the rest of us right after we'd entered the building. 

"Are you crazy?" Ruby asked. 

I gave her a sharp glare. "We have to get him to localize himself. Otherwise, we have no chance of defeating him—we can't pursue a disembodied consciousness across Lunar, and if he manages to make a body for himself somewhere else, his power will rise exponentially." Although that was really just a guess on my part. 

"Kind of like fishing," Meloth said. "You can't find fish by just diving into the water at random, and if you don't know where to look for them, the best way to catch some is to lower some bait and let them come to you." As everyone turned to look at him, he added, "I've been sailing with my father since I was eight, and sometimes, when you've been becalmed for a while, even crews on merchant ships end up doing a lot of fishing." 

Lira frowned. "So what can we use to bait a Zophar? What does he want?" 

"Minions," Altus said. "Mana. Lord Ghaleon's head on a platter," he added with a wry smile. 

" _That_ you're not getting," Azure said, with a tiny flying-cat growl. 

Zaile sighed. "That was pretty obviously supposed to be a _joke_ , Skyblue." 

"Well, it wasn't funny." 

"We don't have the leisure to set up something elaborate involving my decapitation," I said. "I don't want to come back a hundred years or so from now and discover that Zophar won after all. Minions . . . not impossible, but it would take too long and require that the people involved be most excellent actors." There, enough prodding for the moment. The more input they thought they had into the plan, the more likely they were to follow it. 

"Which leaves mana," Altus said, giving me a lopsided smile. "Guess that mana-puppet spell of mine is going to be useful after all. I can't think of any other way we'd be able to get enough of the stuff together in one place to make a difference." 

"The question is, will Zophar rise to the bait?" Nall put in grimly. "He doesn't really need mana _that_ badly. He can just wait, and gradually skim off what the four of us—" His handwave took in Ruby, Azure and Zaile . . . well, along with everyone else in the room. "—are radiating anyway." 

"He might," Altus said. "He isn't exactly the most patient of beings." 

"And he's frightened," Zaile added, shuddering. "I spent hours hanging in the dark while he worked on me, listening to him talk to himself. He's never had a real rival before— Althena and Lucia don't count, in his mind, because they weren't the same kind of creature as he is." 

"Nor am I," I said sharply. _I hope._

"Aren't we rushing things a bit?" Azure asked. "I mean, Zophar isn't going to manage to get himself embodied any time soon. We could just wait a bit, until you're really recovered and we have time to make a really good plan—" 

I was going to reply, but Altus beat me to it. "No. If we wait too long—and we have no way of telling just how long is 'too long'—Zophar could find some more mundane opposition to send after us. Or he might just arrange to keep our hands as full as possible—stir up hatred against mages, against beastmen, against the dragons . . . He isn't completely stupid, and he does understand long-range planning. We have to deal with him as soon as possible." He hesitated, then added, "Ruby, you've fought Zophar before, haven't you? Does he favour any specific spells, anything like that?" 

"Not that I ever noticed," the Red Dragon admitted. "Elemental and non-elemental attack spells, spells that drain your magic _and_ your physical endurance, mute spells, spells that negate assistive magics . . . Oh, yeah, and he had this one really nasty one that always seemed to knock the target down for the count. I'd stock up on Angel's Tears before engaging him, if I were you." 

"Lovely," Zaile squeaked. "How do we counter that?" 

"With the White Dragon's spell," I said, nodding to Meloth. "Which you're going to practice until your tongue bleeds, boy." 

"Um." The young beastman swallowed visibly. "Right." 

"Do you have any instructions for the rest of us, Lord Ghaleon?" Altus asked. 

"Yes," I said flatly. "I want you to teach the mana concentration spell to Nall, Ruby, and, if he doesn't already know it, Zaile." 

"Not me?" Azure squeaked. 

I gave her a quick scritch under the chin. "I intend to teach _you_ myself, if it's any consolation. Ludus, Lady Lira . . . we're going to need a mana crystal to hold this power. A large one. If you could see to it . . . ?" 

"Of course," the little Guildmistress said firmly. Ludus just grunted. Had he figured out that I was trying to keep as many people as possible busy, to avoid giving them too much time to think? 

"I'd like to make a side trip to Taben's Peak, to . . . check on things," Nall said. "When are we going to go forward with this master plan of yours?" 

I pretended to think. "The mana crystal is going to take a little while to create . . . Say, not tomorrow, but the next day." I would have preferred to get started sooner, but I didn't want to rush things too much—didn't want to make it _look_ like I was rushing them. 

"Good. That'll give us a little time . . . just in case." Nall swallowed visibly. 

The meeting broke up after that, but to my surprise, Altus and Zaile stayed behind as everyone else filed out the door. I'd expected to be left alone with Azure. 

"Lord Ghaleon." The ex-Premier didn't address me until the four of us were alone in the room. "Will you be staying here, or . . . ?" His eyes seemed to be trying to transmit some sort of message to me. 

I sighed. "I had intended to go home for a little while." 

"To your pixie garden? I've always wanted to see it." 

So that was it—he wanted to talk to me privately. "Very well, although I can't guarantee that I'll be a very conscientious host just now." 

My teleport was a bit ragged, but emerging into the not-sunlight of the ancient ruin relaxed me just a little. 

"Dear Ghaleon—" 

"—Ghaleon—" 

"—and Zaile, too! We haven't seen you in a long time! And who's this?" The blue pixie fluttered around Altus, examining him from different angles. 

"My name is Altus," the blond man said, with a smile- -it's hard not to smile around the pixies. 

"Altus," the blue pixie repeated. "We're very pleased to meet you, cousin!" 

"'Cousin'?" Altus turned to look at me. "Then the pixies are . . ." 

". . . the seventh race of the Vile Tribe," I completed for him. "You didn't know?" 

He shook his head. "The seventh race isn't much more than a legend, these days." Then he hesitated again. 

I sighed. "Altus, not even Zophar can overhear us through the spells on this place—I made certain of that, long ago. Say whatever it is that you have to say." 

"You really did intentionally lay out that plan of yours somewhere he _could_ overhear it, didn't you?" 

" _What?_ " Azure's squeak just about shattered my eardrum, and I could see her fur standing up on end out of the corner of my eye in the instant before she fluttered down off my shoulder and took on human form. "Ghaleon, what are you playing at?" 

I turned and looked toward the pool in the center of the room, in order to avoid having to meet anyone's eyes. "What I am going to say is to remain between us, do you understand?" 

"Of course, Lord Ghaleon." 

"All right," Zaile squeaked. 

There was a moment's silence as Azure, doubtless, fumed. "I'm not going to like this, am I?" 

"Probably not," I said flatly. 

Another silence. "Still, I trust you. I won't repeat whatever it is that you think has to stay so secret." 

"Good," I said, still gazing at the water. "Well, then. Have any of you thought this through?" 

"I'm not sure I understand," Altus said. 

I sighed. "Consider. None of you questioned me when I said we had to get Zophar to localize himself. However, while he remains disembodied, we can never be certain that we have all of him in one place." 

"By the Barren Earth the Bitch Goddess condemned us to! You're going to let him just _take_ that mana, aren't you." 

"And hope that he's frightened enough of me to do something stupid with it," I agreed obliquely. "I think—I _think_ , based on some of what he said to me eight hundred years ago—that he can't wield his full power without also having some kind of physical presence in the world. If that's true, he's going to want to be embodied when he confronts me." 

Zaile laughed—well, more of a giggle, really. "Manipulating the bastard—oh, that's _beautiful_. I couldn't have come up with nearly so good an idea. Lord Ghaleon, it's a pleasure working with you." 

"It isn't an infallible plan," I warned them, still staring at the water. "If Zophar suspects that I let him overhear us deliberately, it could all fall apart." 

"In which case we should probably stay here a while longer, to make it look like I really did follow you just so that I could see the place," Altus said. 

I nodded. "I'll rejoin you in a few minutes, after I get rid of this—" I flicked thumb and forefinger against my armour, eliciting a metallic _ping_. 

To my surprise, I felt a small weight settle back onto my shoulder before I was halfway to the stairs that led up to my apartments. 

"'Seventh race of the Vile Tribe'?" Azure asked in her increasingly familiar squeaky flying-cat voice. 

"I suppose it's easy for an outsider to think of them— us—as homogeneous," I said as I worked the door. "I suspect that, even now, my mother's people mostly keep to themselves . . ." 

A small blue paw swatted me on the side of the neck. "You're talking around the subject." 

My smile was thin, but genuine. "What exactly do you want to know?" 

"Well, for starters, what are the other six races? I mean, while we were at Tezaria's village, I saw some people who looked kind of like you and Altus, and some big guys with weird- coloured skin, and a couple of short, furry, one-eyed people, so I guess that's three, but . . ." 

"The Magic Race, the Cyani, and the Cyclopean," I identified as we started up the stairs. "The other three were always less numerous. The Sithist are four-armed, with scaly skin—vaguely reptilian. The remaining two, the Modakh and the Lirret, I know little about myself. In the old days, some of the races also produced occasional mutant children who didn't match the parent stock—I don't know if that's still the case." 

"So different, and yet you're all considered one people . . ." Azure said. 

I snorted. "That wasn't exactly by choice. Do you know anything at all about the origins of the Vile Tribe?" 

"Um . . . Not much. You used to live on the Frontier, I know that." 

"I mean before the Frontier." We'd reached the top of the stairs, and Azure fluttered from my shoulder as I bent down to pry my boots off. 

"Then I guess my answer should have been, 'no, nothing at all.' Even Nall doesn't know anything about that, or so he says." 

"I'm not surprised. It took me a while to piece it together myself, and some of the sources I used in doing so no longer exist." _Like Xenobia._ "Ultimately, just like every other living creature on Lunar, we came from the Blue Star . . . albeit via a slightly different route." That _we_ was getting a bit more comfortable now. _My mother's people._ I still only half-believed that. 

"I don't understand." 

"To explain properly, I have to start eight thousand or so years ago, at the end of the first War Against Zophar, the one that made such a mess of the Blue Star. You have to understand that, although a lot of the land was laid waste and the climate was badly disrupted, that entire world didn't become uninhabitable immediately—indeed, there were outlying regions that, at first, seemed little changed from how they had been before the war. So, when Althena tried to round up the surviving inhabitants for the move to Lunar, there were a few who resisted and insisted on staying behind." That brought me to the door of the bedroom. 

"Over time, as the climate grew worse, the descendants of these stubborn holdouts were forced to migrate across the face of their world. Ironically, the places that stayed livable the longest were the sites of the war's greatest battles." I unfastened my swordbelt and propped the heavy weapon attached to it against the wall, then went to work on the straps holding my armour in place. Azure fluttered from my shoulder to sit on the bed. "So that was where they settled, in regions where the mana was distorted by old war spells. And over the course of generations, that distorted mana twisted them as well. The people of each settlement became . . . not quite human, in various ways." Putting armour and cape aside, I opened the door of my wardrobe to look for something to wear that wasn't stiff and stinking with sweat and dried blood. 

"After a few more centuries, though, even the old battlefields started to become unable to support life, and the people living there plunged into a desperate search for other ways to survive. Some migrated underground, or took up residence in ancient ruins of the pre-war Mechanical Age, but one farsighted group, drawn from eight or nine different villages, found a smaller version—perhaps a test model or prototype—of the great ship Althena had used to evacuate the larger part of the Blue Star's population to Lunar, and conceived an evacuation plan of their own. It wasn't really a very big ship, but they thought it would be large enough to hold most of their children and a few hand-picked adults—enough to give their people a future." Most of the clothes I had stored here had been designed to be worn under armour, and that wasn't what I wanted. Black. Black. Red. Black . . . then, suddenly, soft purple obscured my vision. I batted it frantically aside, thinking I was being attacked, only to discover Azure smirking at me from an upper shelf of the wardrobe. 

I bent down and picked up the thigh-length tunic she'd uncovered, and pulled down the soft, silvery-grey leggings that went with it. "What they didn't know," I said, continuing my narrative, "was that the changes that had come over their peoples were more than skin-deep—some of their races were now dependent on mana for survival, and there is no mana in the void between worlds. Many of those on the ship died in transit, and by the time they reached Lunar, there was no one left who knew how to land the vessel. As a result, they crash-landed in the Frontier." 

"And there isn't much mana there, either," the Blue Dragon filled in, her smirk fading. 

"No," I said quietly. "There isn't." Rummaging through the lower shelves of the wardrobe produced a pair of soft shoes. "Of course, the refugees tried to move out of the Frontier and into Lunar proper, but they . . . simply weren't wanted. The people of Lunar weren't comfortable with such strange . . . creatures . . . around, and the magics the strangers used, distorted as they were by the old war-spells among which the latter had once lived, disturbed them. And so they banded together to drive the newcomers back into the Frontier. It was during the border wars that followed that the term 'Vile Tribe' was first coined—not by my people, although they adopted it as a badge of solidarity and perverse pride, but by their enemies." 

Fresh clothing found, I bundled it into my arms and turned toward the entrance to my private bathroom, bare feet whispering on the smooth metal of the floor. "Things did eventually degenerate into an uneasy peace. Except for a few members of the Magic Race, who could more or less pass as human, my mother's people stopped leaving the Frontier . . . but we're longer-lived than any human or beastman, and we remembered, and watched, and waited for our chance to escape. Eventually, our attempts to do so became too much for Althena to bear, and in order to obtain peace for her followers, she walled us in." Depositing my bundle on the edge of the sink, I stripped off my shirt and threw it at the wall for emphasis. 

"That's—hey, are you sure you want to do that with me in the room?" Azure was blushing purple. 

I continued unfastening my trousers. "I've been naked in front of women before." Well, one woman, anyway—Lemia Ausa, many years ago. "It never seemed to inspire them to jump on me and ravish me." Although perhaps that had been because Lemia had always rather fancied Dyne . . . I hissed in irritation as a bit of stiffened, blood-soaked cloth came painfully loose from my skin. 

"Thus proving that they had no taste," Azure murmured. Her eyes were glued to me now. "Oh, _nice_ ," she added as I peeled off the last of my clothes and stepped out of them. 

"Would you like to inspect my teeth as well?" I asked dryly, adjusting the temperature of the water in the shower. 

"Not worth the effort, since I don't care how old you are," the Blue Dragon said, raising her voice so that she could be heard above the falling water. "Ravishing you, now— _that_ I might try." 

"After all this is over, I might even let you," I said, stepping under the deluge. 

" _Really?_ " 

"I haven't decided yet." 

" _Ghaleon!_ You . . ." Azure seemed to be giggling almost too hard to speak. "I'd never have expected you to be a tease!" 

I chuckled. "Neither would I," I admitted, shaking wet hair back out of my face. "This is all . . . rather new to me." 

"We'll have to make up for lost time, then . . . but yes, I know. Not right now." She growled softly. "That bastard Zophar has a lot to answer for. I want you to myself." 

"Not as a flying cat, I hope," I said. 

Azure snickered. "Not unless you're one, too." 

"Sorry, but this is the only form I have." 

"We'll have to fix that, too. Eventually. I think you'd make a magnificent white dragon." 

I shivered, although the water was warm. "The thought never crossed my mind," I lied in an attempt to conceal my sudden longing for wings . . . and the more intellectual desire to finally learn and analyze a dragon spell. "Enough," I added, turning off the water. "We shouldn't keep our guests waiting . . . What are you grinning at?" 

"You said 'our'," Azure replied. "I like the sound of that." 

"It was a slip of the tongue," I said dryly, reaching for a towel. "I still haven't decided if this is . . . if I want . . ." Instead of trying to finish the sentence, I decided to dry my hair, not-so-incidentally covering my face in the process. 

Suddenly, warm hands clasped my shoulders and drew me back against another body, an action which probably would have been more romantic if the other party hadn't been wearing shabby leather armour which was going to leave imprints on my back. 

"You need me," Azure's humanform voice murmured in my ear. "How many other people can make you relax like this?" 

"There have been a few," I said quietly. "That exasperating boy-Dragonmaster. Altus, during the periods when I don't have to be suspicious of him. The pixies." _Dyne._ But somehow, I couldn't even speak the name of my long-dead friend—not here and now. 

I didn't expect Azure to reply by snatching the towel from my hands, spinning me around, and kissing me—indeed, if she hadn't done it, I wouldn't have thought she had the strength. And I was so startled that I let her do it. 

"Think about it," she said as she disengaged from me. "About us, I mean. For now, that's all I ask." She dropped the towel over my head. "I'll wait for you outside." 

I pulled the towel off and stared at it for a moment, bemused, feeling a laugh start to bubble up inside me. 

Who ever would have thought . . . ? 

When I left the bathroom, fully dressed, she was perched in flying cat form on an empty shelf in the hallway. Without saying anything, she flew over and took up her normal station on my shoulder instead. 

Downstairs, I discovered that Altus had retreated, in a cloud of pixies, to a spot near the garden's front door. However, another figure had propped himself against the wall at the foot of the staircase: the Black Dragon of Althena, clothed in his false- Cyani form. 

"You look pretty gloomy, Blackie," Azure said, but Zaile ignored her, and addressed me instead. 

"Lord Ghaleon, I . . . Can we talk?" 

I raised an eyebrow. "I didn't have any urgent plans for the next ten minutes." _Why the sudden respect?_ I wondered. Up until now, only people connected with the Vile Tribe had been "Lord"ing me. 

"Um, Skyblue . . ." 

"I'll just flutter over and talk to Altus for a while, then." From her tone of voice, I suspected that Azure was rolling her eyes, but her weight still lifted off my shoulder. 

Zaile watched her leave, staring after her silently even when she was long out of earshot. 

"You had something you wanted to talk about," I prompted. 

Zaile shook himself. "Yes, I did. I'm sorry for wasting your time, Lord Ghaleon, it's just that—" 

"You must want something from me very badly, to be groveling to me so," I said dryly. 

The Black Dragon winced. "I . . . don't have the right to ask you for anything. Especially when I nearly killed you. Twice. And then you nearly suicided, casting that spell to save me." 

"Don't read too much into it," I said. "We may yet need the Black Dragon of Althena. I don't have time to wait for an egg to mature." 

"That accounts for the holy spell, but not for you telling me your plans—or Altus either, for that matter. You trusted us, despite what we've done." 

"Or I might have been lying again," I suggested, not really liking where this seemed to be leading. 

"You might, but I don't think so." Zaile shifted restlessly. "Altus said that it was just that you understood a lot about the kind of mistakes the two of us made. I suppose that makes sense, but . . ." 

"But?" I prompted. 

"That still doesn't explain why you forgave me for Milia Ausa's murder." Zaile's shoulders drooped as the words finally burst out. 

I snorted. "Zaile, I barely knew the woman . . . and do you know how many people have died because of my actions?" I waited half a beat before continuing. "Neither do I. Dozens of my mother's people, in the mines on the Frontier . . . several mages who suffered injuries when Vane fell . . . and we won't even get into what happened while I was pretending to be Zophar's toady. The death of one woman doesn't count for all that much in comparison. I don't have the right to judge you, and I certainly don't have the right to absolve you. For that, you must go to the person who was most injured by your action . . . and I think you know who she is without my having to tell you." 

Zaile licked his lips. "Lira." It wasn't a question. "I suppose you're right." He didn't look very enthusiastic about the idea . . . but then I wouldn't have expected him to. "Lord Ghaleon . . . if she forgives me . . . will you support my application to enter the Magic Guild?" 

"Is that what this is all about?" I shouldn't have been surprised, I realized. Magic—and Azure—were the two things that Zaile wanted most. "You're already a master mage. You have my endorsement, if you want it . . . but given the circumstances, I'm going to leave the decision up to Lira." 

"I understand. And thank you." 

_There goes a very confused young dragon,_ I thought, watching the broad green-black back as it retreated toward Altus and the door. Then I snorted softly. _"Young dragon", indeed._ If you judged our ages in any useful way, Zaile probably had several centuries on me. 

When, I wondered, had I started feeling so old?


	20. Chapter 20

Azure let out a tiny flying-cat yawn and stretched, dislodging the pixie who had draped himself over her back, and almost knocking my book out of my hands in the bargain. "Found anything useful yet?" 

"Not really," I admitted, gently closing the brittle- paged grimoire and laying it aside on a stack of similar volumes. "Some things that I'd like to pursue when I have the leisure, but nothing we can use against Zophar." Nor, truth be told, had I really been expecting to discover any holy attack spells in these volumes—bringing the unread portion of my library down here had really just been an excuse to sit for a while in my garden, among the pixies. 

The Blue Dragon of Althena circled a couple of times and settled in a slightly different position in my lap. "You love this place, don't you?" 

"About as much as you seem to love sitting on me," I agreed. 

"I like being close to you," Azure admitted, "and when I'm in this form, you don't seem to mind." 

I don't know what, if anything, I was going to reply, because, at that moment, there was a flash of light as someone teleported in. Nall. In human form, and . . . carrying a large chest? Or dragging it, from the looks of things. I rose to my feet, dislodging Azure from my lap. 

"Leave that where it is," I said. "There's no need to damage more of the vegetation than you have already. By the way, how do you keep getting in here? The spells on this place shouldn't let anyone but me teleport into the building." 

Nall heaved a sigh and let go of the chest. "I'm not absolutely sure, but I get the impression that your guard-spells mistake me for you—or at least we're similar enough for them to give me the benefit of the doubt." 

"Maybe you draw on your White Dragon nature when you cast teleportation spells," Azure suggested as she fluttered over to her favourite perch—my shoulder. 

"Spare me," I muttered, for her ears alone. Then, aloud, to Nall, "In any case, what are you doing here, and what is that?" I waved a hand in the direction of the chest. 

"I don't know. Quark left it for you, and I can't open it—it seems to be keyed to your magical signature." 

I felt my hands tightening into white-knuckled fists, and forced myself to speak calmly. "And this is supposed to matter to me . . . why, exactly?" 

"If I'd kept it any longer, _dear_ brother, I'd have started feeling like a thief, so I figured I'd make it your problem instead—really, it has nothing to do with you at all. I'll leave it here for now. If you don't want to deal with it, haul it back to Taben's Peak yourself." Nall vanished in another flash of light, leaving me alone once more with Azure and the pixies. And the chest. 

"Aren't you even the least bit curious?" Azure asked. 

"About whatever legacy the father I murdered might have left me?" I asked bitterly. "It's probably a trap that he created in his last moments of life." 

The Blue Dragon snorted—right in my ear. "Funny, I've never seen you try to run away from a problem before. Or be so terrified of dealing with a mistake." 

"Thus proving that you still don't know me nearly as well as you think you do," I retorted. 

I turned around, went back to where I had originally been sitting, and lifted the topmost volume from the pile of unread grimoires . . . but a few minutes later, I was forced to admit that I wasn't concentrating on it properly. 

"Barren Earth," I muttered tiredly, and leaned back against the tree under which I sat. 

Azure nudged my hand, triggering what was becoming an automatic flying-cat-petting reflex. 

"You know," she said quietly, "by all rights I should hate you. You didn't kill my mother directly, but she was never quite the same after you ripped her aura away, or so Nall says. She managed to hold herself together long enough for me to mature, but after that, she just sort of . . . pined away. I thought you would be a monster, unable to feel sorrow, or compassion . . . or pain. Instead, I found a man who uses his acid tongue to hide the fact that he's capable of being genuinely kind . . . and genuinely hurt." 

"Is there a point to this?" I asked. 

"Sort of. I'm trying to nerve myself to say something, because I have a feeling you're not going to react very well." The Blue Dragon wriggled around in my lap. 

"Are you afraid that I'm going to try to smash you through the wall?" I asked dryly. "If so, don't worry—I wouldn't traumatize the pixies that way." 

"No, that's not it. Your violence is always very . . . calculated. But I _am_ afraid that you're going to try to freeze me out the way you sometimes do." 

I sighed. "This is about Quark, isn't it." It wasn't a question. 

"I think . . ." Azure hesitated, swallowed visibly, and then continued, "I think you're afraid of admitting just how much he hurt you. You've built up this whole . . . persona . . . for yourself—powerful mage, master of dragons, demigod . . . and you don't feel that someone like that should still feel pain from being abandoned by his parents. But you know . . . maybe he had a reason. He wouldn't have left anything behind for you if he'd forgotten about you. And maybe his reason was something even you would respect. Maybe there's some clue to how he really felt inside that chest. If you don't open it, you'll never know, though." 

"I don't recall hiring you to be my therapist," I said irritably. 

"It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it," she retorted. 

I glared at her as I laid down the grimoire that I was still holding. She bore my gaze without flinching. 

"I can see that living with you isn't going to be easy," she said as she flittered out of my lap to let me get up. "Maybe it's a good thing that I made a fool of myself over Nall, all those years ago—it dispelled most of my illusions about love and romance quite nicely." 

"I haven't exactly agreed on any kind of a relationship with you," I retorted. 

"You will," she predicted. "Where else will you ever find a woman who isn't a meek sheep of a thing, but still lets you strop that tongue of yours on her? Don't worry, though—I don't expect you to act like a giddy teenager with his first girlfriend. After all, it's been a long time since either of us were that young or that silly." 

I snorted. "I was never such a fool, although I can't speak for you." 

"Oh, come on—even a dull stick like you must have had a crush on someone, sometime." 

I turned my back to her and strode off toward the chest. Behind me, I heard a thump. 

"It was Dyne, wasn't it?" Not for the first time, I damned my acute hearing—I doubt a human would even have been aware that Azure was speaking. "You were in love with your best friend." 

"You're mistaken." 

"No, I don't think I am. Whether you'll ever admit it, even to yourself, is something else again, but I'm pretty sure what you felt for him went _way_ beyond friendship." 

"Spare me." I strove to put all of my usual acid into that, but I was already wondering. 

Me and Dyne? 

"I never did much like the idea of falling in love," I admitted. "The loss of self-control involved . . . Back then, I didn't know what I really was, but I did know that my power was much greater than that of the other mages around me, and that losing control would be very dangerous. So if I ever . . . had any such feelings toward him . . . I murdered them before they could truly emerge." Perhaps that would satisfy her. Perhaps it would even satisfy me, in time. 

A small weight settled on my shoulder. "Ouch," Azure squeaked. "Well, serves me right for being so startled by my own deductions that I fall out of the air. Are you going to open that chest?" 

"If I don't, it—and you—are just going to sit there glaring at me," I said dryly, noting that the pixies, with the peculiar sensitivity that they sometimes displayed, were staying well away from both us and the chest. 

Azure giggled. 

"You know, when I think about the Blue Dragon of Althena making that sound, it seems almost obscene," I said as I bent down to examine Nall's little ungift. 

"So just think of me as a friendly flying cat, and forget about the dragon part," she said. 

The lock on the chest was indeed magical, worked by placing one's hand on a smooth area of the surface. "Careful, or if I _do_ get involved with you, your first anniversary gift is going to be a catnip toy," I said as I reached down. 

"I don't think I'd like you nearly so much if your sense of humour weren't so utterly vile," Azure said smugly as the lid of the chest sprang up, revealing a square of something cream- coloured lying on top of something almost blindingly white. An instant later, there was something blue there, as well, examining the other items at close range. "A note," Azure said, nudging the cream-coloured thing. "And something made out of his shed scales—or at least, I hope they were shed." 

"I hardly think Quark would have skinned himself over me." 

"Maybe not, but . . . Oh, just read the note. Then we'll know." 

I picked the bit of paper up between thumb and forefinger and examined it. Cheap reed paper. Folded in quarters. Not sealed, but . . . "There's a spell—" A mist began to form above the paper, and, suddenly suspicious, I dropped it. 

Azure swooped down from the chest and picked it up, then sat on my shoulder holding it. Nothing happened. "Do you think it's keyed to you again? Here, take it." 

"If this turns out to be some kind of trap, I hope you really are as good at healing spells as the legends about the Blue Dragon say," I said, accepting it. 

"What, you've never seen one of us in action?" 

"Not of that kind," I replied dryly as the mist began to rise again. 

Slowly, the mist condensed itself until a tiny image of Quark sat on the surface of the folded sheet of paper. 

"Ghaleon," it said—in Quark's huge, draconic voice, all out of proportion to its size. Then it hesitated. "I don't know when—or even if—you are going to hear this. I don't know how much you've found out in the years that have passed since the creation of this message, which I am recording the night after your friend Dyne received my blessing. He will make a fine Dragonmaster . . . and I have never been so proud as when I saw you standing at his side, my son." 

The image sighed. "This . . . is difficult. As I've said, I don't know what you know, so I'll begin with the reason I was forced to give you up." Quark's eyes slid shut. "Dragons aren't supposed to have children—Althena forbids it, because, once upon a time, a dragon/human crossbreed all but destroyed the Blue Star. But your mother . . ." The image shook its head. "Such a strange, proud woman, if that's the word for a female of the Vile Tribe. She'd been living alone in a remote mountain valley since before Althena imprisoned her people in the Frontier. When I stumbled upon her, she'd been apart from others so long that it took her some time to remember her own name: Alafa Uyulan-thal." 

Another sigh. "You probably know we can shift shapes—I know that bit of lore is written in the Great Library at Vane—so I doubt it will surprise you too much that I managed to convince her that I was just another human. As it turned out, I convinced her a little too well, because she cast a spell on me, and . . . um." Quark's image blushed an elegant pale pink. "I won't say that I was entirely averse to the idea—she was a beautiful woman—but the risks . . ." He shook his head. "The risks turned out to be more than even she expected. You see, she didn't survive your birth—something tore inside her, and she didn't know any healing spells . . . and I wasn't there. You nearly died as well. It was pure luck that I got there before dehydration and lack of nourishment killed you." 

The image's head dropped. "I didn't know what to do. By Althena's Law, I should have killed you . . . but I just couldn't. Not an innocent child. Not my son. And yet, I couldn't keep and raise you myself, either—the other dragons knew my human identity, and even if I'd claimed I'd merely adopted you, how could I have explained having a Vile Tribe child in my care? No one who knew your mother's people could have failed to see her blood in you. And so I left you where I knew you'd be found." 

The dragon-image visibly squared its shoulders, and its eyes were suddenly boring into me. "I spent the time between then and now worrying about what you would become—I didn't even dare watch over you as much as I would have liked, so it was a complete surprise to me when you turned up here, at the side of a future Dragonmaster." Quark's jaw dropped slightly in a draconic smile. "You seem to have become everything I hoped you would be and more: a gifted mage, a skilled warrior, beloved of those around you . . . and a supporter of Althena's plans for this world. I have always loved you, but you could not have made me more pleased or proud than I was when I saw you standing before me today." 

The image sobered. "As you mature, I expect you will become more and more aware that you are . . . exceptional in many ways. I am not old enough to remember the Blue Star, but the fragments of information Althena has let slip suggest you will be more powerful than any true dragon. You may not come into your full power for centuries, as I suspect you may also share our lifespan . . . and if the behaviour of my comrades is any indication, by that time you may also have become a bit cynical. Please, my son: let your use of that tremendous strength be guided by Althena's plan for the world, and by the hearts of your friends." 

Quark made a waving gesture with one forepaw. "The only other legacy I can offer you rests within this chest. Whether you'll find it of use or not I don't know, but dragons aren't much good at making things, and my human self is an armourer, so . . ." He shrugged. "I . . . this is getting difficult again. Be well, Ghaleon. Be safe. And never forget that your father loves you." 

The image turned to mist again and faded away as the paper that had generated it fluttered down from my nerveless fingers. 

"You're crying," Azure said. She pawed ineffectually at my face, then snarled, "Ah, _Barren Earth!_ " and hopped down, becoming human before her feet had touched the ground. She wrapped her arms around me, and crushed me against her armoured body. "I'm sorry. I should never have suggested that you get anywhere near that thing." 

Tentatively, I slid my arms around her and hugged her back. "No, you were right. If I hadn't listened to his message, I would always have wondered." For a moment, I let myself rest my chin on her shoulder. _Who would have known that someone's love could hurt so much?_ I wondered. _Poor Quark . . ._ No. There would be time for grief later, after I was done with Zophar. 

I squared my shoulders and pulled back a bit. Azure correctly interpreted this as a cue to release me and take a step back. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, searched for a distraction . . . and found one. "Let's see what else is in the chest—I'm curious, now, to see what that mass of scales is." 

"So am I," Azure admitted, "but I wasn't about to suggest it." 

"I am not that fragile," I said acidically. 

She sniffled. "Maybe not, but _I_ am. I . . . don't want to hurt you." 

The mass of white turned out to be the oddest, and in its own way the most impressive, full-length suit of armour I had ever seen—dragonscale, strategic metal reinforcements, and soft leather padding all expertly fitted together to form tunic, trousers, boots, gauntlets, and, at the very bottom of the chest, a light helm. As I examined it more closely, I discovered that it had all the characteristics Dyne had ascribed to good armour: flexible when worked from the inside, but locking together to dissipate the force of a blow when struck from the outside, and designed to cover every inch of the wearer except parts of his face. And . . . 

I murmured a keyword, and suddenly the leather padding inside the tunic was spangled with glowing runes and line diagrams. 

Azure whistled softly. "Is it all like that?" 

"I think so. The spells I recognize are beneficial, and many are fairly minor, but even so . . . this must have taken him years. And apparently Zaile wasn't the first dragon to study forbidden lore," I added with a thin smile. "There are human spells here, and several that I think are of the Vile Tribe." 

"You _think_? You're not sure?" 

I shrugged. "He must have learned them from my mother, and the different families all had different spells . . . many of which they guarded jealously from outsiders. 'Uyulan' isn't a name I recognize from the Frontier of eighteen hundred years ago, so she may well have been the last of her line." 

"Except for you." 

"I'm male, so in terms of lineage, I don't count—my children, if any, would use only their mother's name in any but the most formal circumstances, and in the generation after that, the Uyulan name would vanish altogether." I traced a few select lines in one of the patterns of light on the inside of the armour, and nodded to myself as it flared. "And that one is a holy spell, although not one familiar to me. Quite the magical packrat, our Quark seems to have been." 

Azure, meanwhile was bent over the chest again. She'd just lifted the helm out and set it aside when she suddenly stopped and leaned even further down. "Ghaleon, come here. I think this has a false bottom." 

"Curiouser and curiouser," I murmured, putting the White-Dragon-scale tunic down gently on the grass and going over for a look. The bit of the interior that Azure pointed out to me _could_ have been a natural knot-hole in the wood the massive chest was made from, or . . . No, although I couldn't actually _see_ them, my searching fingers found the seams that outlined a rectangular opening in the bottom of the main compartment. "Let's see." When I slid a finger into the hole, another spell flared, and there was a soft pop as the panel involved came free. 

The compartment we had uncovered wasn't very big, and contained two flat, rectangular objects wrapped in oilcloth and silk. I unwrapped the first one slowly. 

"A book?" Azure said. "Why would he have gone to such great lengths to hide—" 

I opened it and gently turned the first few brittle pages. "It's a Vile Tribe grimoire, presumably my mother's. This is a treasure beyond price . . . and, for Quark, something absolutely forbidden. No one finding it in his possession would ever have believed he hadn't experimented with the contents, as he indeed seems to have done. The other . . ." Suddenly intensely curious, I unwrapped it—indeed, I had to force myself not to tear off the fragile, brittle old silk. 

The volume I uncovered didn't look like much at first. It didn't even have a proper cover, just a slightly thicker sheet of yellowed paper, with a title printed at the center in the black block type so beloved of the people of the Mechanical Age. The title itself was incomprehensible—oh, I could work out how to say the words, none of which appeared to have less than six syllables, but I couldn't extract any meaning from them. Frowning, I opened it at random in the middle, discovering that the bizarre spiral wire binding permitted the front cover to be brought right around to the back . . . and froze. 

"What is it?" Azure asked. 

I closed the ancient book and laid it aside with, if anything, even greater reverence than I had shown the other. "I'm going to have to study this carefully, but I think it's a grimoire of holy spells . . . and quite possibly the oldest book on Lunar, in the bargain. I'm fairly sure it predates the original war with Zophar." 

The Blue Dragon whistled softly. "Where do you think Quark got it?" 

"I have no idea, although if I had to guess . . ." 

"Yes?" 

"It might also have been my mother's, brought to Lunar by the Vile Tribe when they escaped the Blue Star." Which would make it a secret that Althena and her followers had meant to be lost to history. Perhaps . . . 

I repacked the trunk quickly, but not without care, and carried the two fragile, ancient books over to my reading spot at the foot of the tree. 

Perhaps, within those yellowing pages, I would finally find a way to kill Zophar.


	21. Chapter 21

When I returned to Vane the next day, I wore the dragon scale armour, minus the helm, which Azure had spirited away for me into the nowhere place where she kept her clothing and weapons when she was in flying cat form. I might have felt self-conscious if the complex of spells with which Quark had endowed his creation hadn't been gently buoying me along—not because I hadn't already made a habit of showing up here in armour, but because I was wearing the gift of the father I had killed. I still felt a little like I'd received my inheritance under false pretenses. 

Even Quark's spells couldn't completely erase my worries about the upcoming confrontation, however. That ancient book from the Mechanical Age . . . I had studied it until my vision blurred, alternating with my mother's grimoire when the sheer abstruseness of the holy spells had made my head ache, and I still didn't understand how the damned spells _worked_. By all the rules of magic that I knew, they shouldn't have . . . which implied that the rules of magic as I knew them were, at best, incomplete. It might prove an interesting field of research, if I survived this—which I wasn't sure I was going to. I _thought_ that it might be possible to apply the handful of spells I'd managed to memorize in the way I intended to use them, but I'd have been a lot happier if I really understood them. 

I was beginning to think that there was no such thing as a holy attack spell . . . or perhaps, if they existed, Althena and Lucia had very carefully destroyed all the records. _And you still don't entirely trust me, do you, goddess?_ Routing Zophar, I was coming to understand, was probably going to be my proof of good faith where Lucia was concerned, if I could manage it with my scraped-together bits of repurposed non- offensive spells. 

"Lord Ghaleon. Welcome back. Hello, Skyblue." 

I blinked, taking in the waist-length black hair, mage's robe, gold master's ring, and missing left hand, but it was Azure, perched on my shoulder, who said it first. 

"Hi, Zaile. That form looks good on you." 

"Thanks. Since I'll never fly again, it's . . . more efficient . . . than smallform, and less noticeable than the one I was using." Zaile smiled ruefully. The expression lent an odd look to his sharp human face, which already had a vertical line forming at the center of its forehead. 

"Lira accepted you into the Guild, then," I observed. _And forgave you._ I wondered if he realized that even so, he'd have to bear the burden of the death he'd caused for the rest of his life. 

"Given your recommendation, yes. I . . . should warn you both . . . We decided it was best not to tell anyone what I really am. I want to be just Master Zaile here, and not the Black Dragon of Althena." 

"People will notice when you don't get older," Azure pointed out. 

"We've already thought of that. Altus is putting it around that I'm his cousin, one-quarter Vile Tribe." 

"You do seem to have thought of everything," I said. "Very well—I'll keep your little secret." 

"Thank you. I had a feeling you'd understand—Master Galin." The Black Dragon winked at me as he said it. "I like the outfit, by the way. It suits you." 

I rolled my eyes. "So where have you built the mana crystal?" 

"It's a couple of hours' walk from town. We . . . figured you'd prefer not to have it too close to any civilians." 

"You figured correctly," I admitted. I'd already nearly destroyed Vane once, when I'd shot it down out of the sky, and I didn't particularly want to do that again. "Take me there." 

Zaile's teleport was . . . unexceptionable. Practiced. We emerged from it at the top of a ridge that provided an excellent view down into a rocky valley in the foothills, at the center of which a mana crystal squatted like a giant grey toad. 

I'd always thought that uncharged mana crystals were rather ugly things. A person from the Mechanical Age might have described them as magical batteries, a means of powering complex permanent spells that needed more energy than just what they could draw in from the atmosphere, but that couldn't be constantly attended and recast by a master mage. Normally, the crystals operate in groups, with one powering whatever spell is involved while the others are taken somewhere else to soak in energy for a few hours or days—hauling them around was one of the duties I'd often been stuck with as an apprentice, because I'd had a more than usually good ability to sense natural mana concentrations. 

We weren't going to be able to just let this monster charge itself from the ambient, though—normally the crystals were no larger than a man's head, and this one was the size of a curled-up dragon. But of course, I'd been prepared for that. What I hadn't been prepared for was the group of people seated on a flat boulder down near the crystal, conversing intently . . . although, on reflection, I should have been. After all, I hadn't actually bothered to order the ones that I didn't want there to stay away. 

They didn't hear me as I began to descend the narrow path that led from the ridge to the valley floor. The spells Quark had woven into my dragonscale boots helped with that a bit, but most of the reason that none of them looked up was probably that they were too intent on their card game. 

"Raise." 

"Hmm. I'll match that and raise you three." 

"Barren Earth, that's too much for me. I fold." 

Nall appeared to have folded at some point before we arrived, and was sitting there with a disgusted look on his face, staring down at the little pile of pebbles that apparently constituted what was left of his stakes, as Altus threw his cards down and Meloth sat back with a grin on his face, having just pushed three more little rocks into the center of their lopsided circle. Lira and Ruby were both frowning intently at their hands. They all jumped a bit as I stopped behind Altus and asked the obvious question. 

"What are you doing here?" 

Meloth blinked disingenuously at me. "Teaching Lira how to play poker." 

"And waiting for you, _dear_ brother." Nall had to have been practicing his sarcasm—he was getting better at it. 

"I'm only here to wish you all good luck, though," Lira added. "I'll leave before the fighting starts, since I know I wouldn't be of much help. You were right, before, when you said I hadn't studied the combat arts as closely as I should have. I like making things more than I do breaking them . . . and I don't want to endanger anyone by making them waste time protecting me." When she said "anyone", her eyes went to Meloth, however. I sighed softly. _Dyne, you'd tell me that I have to save the future for the sake of these children, wouldn't you? And I find I agree._ For them . . . and for myself, I admitted, suddenly very conscious of the weight of a blue flying cat on my shoulder. 

"You're displaying a remarkable amount of sense," I said. "Meloth, cast the White Dragon's spell. When you're done, Zaile will take the two of you back to Vane." 

"Now wait a minute—" Meloth began. 

"Are you _arguing_ with me, boy?" I asked, making an effort to put as much acid into that as I could. 

The young beastman visibly swallowed, but he kept his head high. "Yes, Master, I am, because I can see what you're trying to do, and, well, I think it sucks. Unlike Lira, I _do_ have the ability to be of some help to you—after all, I'm the Dragonmaster—and I'm not going to be shunted aside because you decided you wanted to protect me." 

"You're overestimating your value to me." I kept my voice sharp. _Dyne, you'd know the right words, wouldn't you? All I know how to do is lie._

"Am I? I don't think so. After all, this is the second time, remember? You sent Azure and Irina and I away just before you got yourself half-killed fighting a bunch of other mages." Meloth gave me a mulish glare. "The only way you're going to get me to leave is by picking me up by the collar and dragging me back to Vane, because I'm not going to cooperate. Do you have any idea how I'd feel if you or Azure . . . or Nall or Ruby . . . or even Altus or Zaile got hurt because I wasn't here to cast that damned spell a second time? And anyway, why does Master Altus get to stay? I don't hear you telling _him_ to leave." 

The former Premier and I exchanged glances. 

"Boy," I said slowly, "I hope for your sake that you never need to understand why I am willing to let Altus stay here." In that way, Meloth was innocent still. He knew nothing of sin or atonement—not deep down inside in the way that only a sinner can. "But I'm getting the impression that even if I do have Zaile drag you away, you'll just find some way to come back, and we don't have time for that kind of silliness." 

The young beastman was slowly acquiring a broad grin. " _Thank_ you, Master." 

Meloth was actually fairly bright, as demonstrated by the way he was learning to decode my more oblique remarks. 

"Good luck," Lira said . . . and then leaned over and kissed Meloth on the cheek, which made them both blush. "I'll be waiting for you to get back," she added. 

"You were never that young, were you?" Azure whispered in my ear. 

"I doubt it," I murmured back as Lira slid down from the rock and went over to stand beside Zaile, who wasted no time, flickering out with her, and then almost immediately reappearing alone. 

"I take it you'd like me to charge the crystal now," the Black Dragon of Althena said. 

"I see no point in waiting," I agreed. 

Zaile walked over to the huge grey lump, put one hand on it, and spoke a keyword in a firm, carrying voice. I frowned as I felt something _pulling_ at me in some subtle way—the first indication I'd had that I really was generating mana. 

The crystal went from grey to white, with light dancing somewhere at the core of it. 

"And now we _do_ have to wait," I said. "Zophar isn't omniscient. It may take him a little while to notice our . . . invitation." 

"Deal us in," Azure added, hopping down off my shoulder and taking on her human form. 

Half an hour or so later, I was running a bluff with a pair of threes when the sky—no, the entire atmosphere, really— darkened. 

"Ghaleon," the massive voice growled out of thin air. "I should have known this would turn out to have something to do with you." 

I shrugged and laid down my cards. "You know what they say: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is." 

Zophar chuckled. "You might consider taking that advice yourself. Or do you think you can bluff me as easily as you can your friends?" 

Now it was my turn to laugh. "Do you think my presence here is merely a bluff? Prove it. If you can." The Zophar I'd known had a colossal ego, and I intended to take advantage of it. 

"Oh, I intend to," Zophar purred. "Such a tempting opportunity for revenge may not come along again for another eight centuries. Before I am done with you, you will suffer the pains of the damned." 

That startled another laugh from me. "That implies that you actually believe in hell." 

"I've been there, _cousin_ —and I intend to introduce you to it as well. Tell me, Ghaleon, can you imagine hanging in absolute empty blackness, unable to do anything but throw yourself against the walls of your cage? For thousands of years? That was the prison that Althena and Lucia created for me. It shouldn't be too much work to seal up the breach I made after I've stuffed you in there. Look forward to it." 

I snorted—since I wasn't aware of anything when I was dead, the threat struck me as rather empty. The initial body- death would be unpleasant, yes, but after that, there would just be nothing. A kind of oblivion. I could think of far worse fates. "Talk is cheap." 

"So it is." 

Night fell instantaneously, leaving the little valley lit only with the glow of the mana crystal. Then that was gone too, vanishing under the blackness of Zophar's presence. I heard someone yelp in surprise—the blackness was empty of any other sound, even that of the wind. 

"Steady," I said. "He's trying to rattle us." 

"Such arrogance, Ghaleon. Why must everything I do be about _you_?" 

I spat the keyword of a light spell in reply, and the ball of foxfire came into existence just in time for us to see the mana crystal shatter. Altus and Zaile and I all spoke the same spell to deflect the shards at the same time. 

"Now, there's a lot of hard work gone to waste," Zaile said lightly as a tower of blackness sprouted from the core of the crystal. 

"If it bothers you, you can make another one when we're done here," Altus replied. 

"Too much work," the Black Dragon replied. 

The blackness no longer stretched from Lunar to sky. Instead, it was shrinking down and broadening out, becoming . . . 

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," Azure said. 

Zophar's chosen body was nearly twenty feet tall, by my estimation, but that was the only really impressive thing about it. Most of its other characteristics—the blue skin, the apparent lack of gender despite near-nudity, the androgynously pretty face—struck me as merely odd, evidence that Zophar's psychological issues were even more complex and bizarre than mine. 

"Do you honestly believe you can fight me, little Ghaleon?" 

I replied with the keyword of a Nitro Dagger. Zophar batted the ice missiles away, and laughed . . . or started to. He broke off abruptly when Meloth slammed the Red Dragon's fire spell into him from behind. I nodded approvingly—the young beastman had apparently been practicing even more than I'd required him to—as I traced a series of complex symbols in the dirt and began to chant my first repurposed holy spell. It was a short one that only required three false starts to get right. 

The ground crumbled underneath Zophar, and he cursed as he was enveloped in earth up to his nose. I smiled thinly. I'd guessed that Zophar no longer remembered the little vulnerabilities associated with having a body. The spell I'd used had originally been for creating large excavations, and could crumble even the most stubborn rock. Difficult to speak a keyword when you had a mouthful of mud and rock dust . . . 

Unfortunately, Zophar was bright enough to raise his chin and shake his head violently, providing him with a little space in which to breathe and speak. He spat mud and spoke the keyword of a levitation spell . . . which proved not to be enough to get him out of the ground. Then he had to shield himself against a concentrated attack by Altus, Meloth, and the dragons. That gave me the opportunity to complete another holy spell. 

The shield that clamped around Zophar's head was supposed to be impervious to anything and everything. If I hadn't followed up with the keyword of a teleportation spell, I might even have been accused of doing him a good turn. The expression on Zophar's face as he realized that the classes of things that couldn't penetrate the shield included air—and I had just removed the air originally present inside via my little teleport- -was . . . interesting. Well. Without air, he _definitely_ couldn't speak, and I gave it only a few minutes before he lost consciousness, at which point we would have him. 

Unfortunately, there was one thing that I'd forgotten, mostly because I'd been trained since I was a child not to do it. 

It's possible to channel mana without actually casting a spell, to just gather up a raw mass of magical energy and then throw it at something. It's inefficient and dangerous and a good way of producing mana burn in the caster, if you can call him that, but it doesn't require a keyword. Forgetting about that was my first mistake. 

My second mistake, when I realized what Zophar was doing, was trying to respond in kind instead of shielding. I suppose I wanted to prove to myself that what I'd been told was true and I really was more powerful than the ancient demon godling. 

The two waves of raw mana smashed into each other head-on. For a moment, the point of contact remained stationary, then it began to move towards me. Startled, I threw everything I had into the contest. 

It wasn't enough. 

The onset of magical exhaustion is normally a gradual thing, but this time I felt my reserves run dry in an instant. Then the wave of Zophar's power smashed into me. 

And all I had time to think before I blacked out was, _why?_


	22. Chapter 22

"I'm getting very tired of being knocked out," I said as I opened my eyes. 

"So next time wear your helmet," Azure suggested. "That way you won't hit your head on a rock." 

"I think that must have happened after I went down," I said, sitting up slowly, "since I don't remember it." I looked around at an unfamiliar room . . . no, not entirely unfamiliar. "You brought me back to Vane. What happened to Zophar?" 

Azure already had one booted foot propped on the edge of the bed. Now she added the other, crossing them at the ankles. "Whatever spell you were using on him broke when he knocked you out, and he dug himself out and ran . . . well, flew . . . away. There wasn't really much the rest of us could do to stop him." 

"I'm surprised he didn't take the time to finish me off," I said. "I must have weakened him." 

"That, and your armour . . ." 

"My armour _what_?" I prompted. 

"It generated some kind of . . . magical cocoon, I guess you could call it, around you after you lost consciousness. Altus said it would have taken him hours to dismantle the thing, so we just brought you back here cocoon and all, and put you to bed. It dissipated when you woke up." 

I laughed bitterly. _Saved by the father I killed— how's that for irony?_ However, what I said was, "I doubt Altus is going to be happy that we've both got our muddy boots on his bedding." 

Azure grinned. "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much— _my_ mud he might object to, but yours . . . Hell, he was the one who suggested we put you here. These _are_ supposed to be the Guild Premier's rooms, after all." 

"He might as well continue to make use of them, though," I said. "I don't need them, and . . ." I trailed off, not quite sure how to express what I was feeling, the jarring mixture of strangeness from the furniture that my successors had changed—probably many times—and the familiarity that came from the shape of the room itself . . . nostalgia, disquiet . . . 

"Ghaleon?" 

"Sorry," I said. "Just thinking. How long was I unconscious?" 

"Hours. It's the middle of the night now." 

My stomach growled. 

"And you missed supper," Azure observed sagely. 

I flipped the covers back and swung my legs over the edge of the bed—amazingly, although I'd been lying there for several hours wearing full armour, I wasn't stiff. 

"I hope the kitchen here is still in the same place, because I intend to raid it," I said. 

Azure grinned and stood up. "Mind if I tag along?" More soberly, she added, "I couldn't eat much, earlier. I was too worried." 

"Needlessly," I pointed out. 

"Well, unlike _some_ people, I can't just turn my worries on and off," the Blue Dragon of Althena said, with a sniff . . . but her hand found mine for a moment, and squeezed. 

I led her down through deserted hallways to the difficult-to-find entrance to the kitchens. Inside the big room, the fires were banked for the night, but a quick rummage through the cupboards produced bread and cheese and cider. 

"No fish?" Azure asked wistfully. 

I shook my head. "We're too far inland. It only turns up here if some master mage has a sudden craving for the stuff and teleports down to somewhere like Meribia to fetch it. Which doesn't happen very often, or at least didn't in my day. Perhaps I ought to have a pond put in somewhere, if only to keep you and Zaile from harassing the cooks." 

We sat down together at a scarred table that might well have stood in the same place for the past two thousand years—it looked like the same one, anyway, and oak _can_ last that long if it has a little magical help. For a little while we were both silent, occupied with the serious business of eating. Then . . . 

"Ghaleon?" 

"Mmm?" 

"What are we going to do now?" 

"About Zophar, you mean?" I picked up my mug, but stared into the depths of the cider instead of drinking. "I don't know. We have to find him first . . . which may be difficult. And I still don't understand what went wrong. I've been thinking of talking to Lucia again, but . . ." 

"But?" 

I smiled self-deprecatingly. "The thought that I might need to hurts my ego. Childish of me, but there you have it. And . . ." 

"And? You know, I'm getting a bit tired of prompting you through conversations." 

"And I'm afraid of what will happen if it turns out that she doesn't have the answer either," I admitted in a low voice. "If my own ingenuity can't produce a viable course of action, why should I think she can do any better?" 

"Have a little faith in yourself," Azure said. "You haven't even been awake for a hour yet. Given time, I'm certain you'll think of something." She reached across the table to lay her hand on top of mine. "I believe in you, and I'm not the only one." 

"The boy doesn't count," I said, looking away. "He's too naive." 

"Does Altus count? How about Zaile? Ludus, Lira . . . even Nall and Ruby, I think, although Nall would rather have you strip his aura again than admit it. And of course, there are the pixies." 

I snorted, but I could feel my mouth beginning to curve upwards. 

"That's better," Azure said. 

"I don't know how you can expect me to be cheerful at a time like this," I said. 

"Not cheerful," Azure corrected. "But not depressed, either. You always take everything so seriously." 

"I don't know about you, but I think that the end of life on Lunar _is_ something to be taken seriously." 

"Not until it happens," the Blue Dragon of Althena replied serenely. "Zophar may have won the first skirmish, but we can still win the war, right?" 

"I hope so," I said quietly. Then my head snapped up as I heard a faint thread of conversation out in the hall. 

" . . . don't know where to look if he isn't here." Lira, I identified. 

"If he isn't, we'll go wake Altus." Meloth. 

"I hate to do that. He's just as tired as everyone else." 

"So am I, but I'm not going to let it stop me," Meloth said. 

I sighed in exasperation. 

"Then get back to bed before you fall over, boy," I greeted my apprentice as he opened the door. 

To my surprise, the young beastman jerked his head up and thrust out his jaw. "I would, but this is just too important . . . Master, Zophar's taken over the Star Tower!" 

Cider splashed on the worn table as I lost my grip on my mug. " _What?_ How do you know?" 

"Zaile sent us," Lira, more composed, explained. "He was using some kind of scrying spell, trying to find Zophar, and he saw . . ." 

I pushed my chair back from the table. "Take me to him," I snapped. 

Zaile was waiting in one of the deserted classrooms, standing beside a student desk. His fingers rested lightly on the rim of a silver bowl that glittered in a shaft of moonlight coming through one of the windows. 

"What's this about Zophar and the Star Tower?" I asked sharply. 

"I'm not entirely sure yet," the Black Dragon of Althena admitted. "I'm hoping that it's a false alarm—I sent one of the other apprentices to get the best available diviner out of bed so that we can confirm it." 

"What did you see?" I asked again, with exaggerated patience. 

Zaile's brows drew together, deepening the frown line between them. "I saw Zophar landing on the roof of the Star Tower and enveloping it in blackness, and when the blackness dissipated . . . well, what was there wasn't really the Star Tower anymore." 

"Barren Earth," I swore, remembering certain events of eight centuries ago. "Again? He certainly is fond of towers. What about the Star Dragon?" 

"I didn't see any sign of him," Zaile said grimly. 

I swore again. "So much for consulting Lucia," I said. "It looks like we're on our own. Get it confirmed. You'll find me in the kitchen—I see no point in facing this on a half-empty stomach." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Azure smiling in approval. 

Back in the kitchen, I wolfed down the rest of my food and then leaned back in my chair, watching Azure finish hers. 

"You don't look very happy," she said between bites. "More not-happy than I would have expected, I mean." 

"That's because I have a feeling that Zophar is after Lucia," I said. "And if he succeeds in taking her out, then _absolutely everything_ rests on me. If I fail, then Lunar will die . . . and I would be happier if we had some kind of backup plan. Just in case." 

Azure snorted. "That little defeat wiped out all your confidence, didn't it?" 

I turned my head away. "I've been defeated before." 

"Yes, but not by an enemy that you had to jump right back in and fight again . . . right?" 

"Is then when my friends' reassurances are supposed to make me regain my confidence and wade right back in to the fight?" I asked acidically. "Sorry, but there are some traditions that I'm not really big on maintaining." 

She reached across the table and enveloped one of my hands in both of hers. "It really is bad, isn't it?" she said softly. 

And still, I couldn't meet her eyes. Yes, it was bad— and all the worse because I'd come up with an idea for defeating Zophar that might actually work . . . one even worse than my last one. One that even my mind was trying to shy away from. 

I could feel the sword calluses on her skin as she squeezed my fingers—incredible, the attention to detail that she put into her human form. 

"Ghaleon, it'll work out one way or the other. Have hope." 

I sighed. Hope. It was a thing that I'd abandoned so long ago that I could scarcely remember its name. 

Ignoring the footsteps approaching the kitchen, I continued to sit there, hand linked with hers, even after the door opened and Meloth, Lira, Zaile, and a tired, grim-looking Altus descended on us. 

"It's confirmed," the Black Dragon said flatly. "Zophar is at the Star Tower." 

I withdrew my hand from Azure's grip, and stood. "Then I don't have any time to waste." 

"You mean 'we', right?" Meloth said, giving me a sharp look. 

I shook my head. "No, boy, this time I really do mean _I_. I can't afford to let you prevent me from doing what I intend to do." 

"Ghaleon—" Azure was on her feet now as well, and grabbing for my arms. I intercepted her by grabbing both her wrists instead, discovering as I did so that we were very nearly equal in strength. She seemed to realize it as well, because she stopped struggling and glared at me instead. "You're trying to pull something. Again. Spit it out." 

My sigh echoed in the sudden silence of the room. "Very well, but you're going to like this plan even less. _I_ certainly do." 

The Blue Dragon growled softly. "Stop trying to change the subject." 

I gave in—why should _I_ be the only one locked in this . . . waking nightmare I was creating for myself? "I was overconfident, I think, when I suggested I might be able to kill Zophar. I think the best we can hope for at this point is to reimprison him—he threatened to lock me into his old prison and throw away the key, so that place still exists—and I think I've come up with a way of doing it without destroying Lunar the way Althena effectively destroyed the Blue Star." 

"But isn't that a good thing?" Meloth said in a small voice. 

I smiled thinly. "For most of the population of Lunar, it would be, but not for me . . . and I'm fairly certain that no one else in this room is going to be happy with it either. You see, the plan involves my dragging Zophar into that place with me, and sealing the hole that he created in his original escape from the inside . . . thereby trapping us both together for as long as the prison lasts this time." 

Azure . . . sagged. "You can't be serious." 

I released her wrists, instead reaching over to gently touch her face. 

"It doesn't have to be a permanent good-bye—not for the two of us," I pointed out, trying for a gentle tone. "Although you may have to wait a long time. I don't want this either, Azure . . . but my life isn't worth much if you balance it against an entire world. Anyway, you'll have a respite, a few thousand years to come up with a way of dealing with Zophar that doesn't require me to sacrifice myself for Lunar a third time. I must admit, I'm starting to get a bit tired of the whole business." 

I heard a distinct sniffle, and determined a moment later that the source was Meloth. 

"Altus, Zaile," I said. "You're to turn this fool apprentice of mine into a mage if it kills him. And . . . support your Guildmistress, both of you." 

"Of course," Altus said. Zaile just nodded grimly. 

And the next one . . . "Lady Lira, I'm sorry for having to run out on you like this." 

"There is no need to apologize, Lord Ghaleon. The needs of all Lunar clearly take precedence over those of Vane alone." She hesitated, then added, still in her miniature-adult tone, "I'll look after Meloth for you." 

I nodded, and almost smiled, seeing my apprentice blush through his sniffles. _And now for the worst._ "Azure, I— _Mmph!_ " I'd heard of people being silenced with a kiss before, but I'd never expected it to actually happen to me. She'd also flung her arms around me, and was very nearly squeezing me in two despite my armour. 

"I'm _not_ giving up on you," she said fiercely. "Not until you're actually gone. I'm going to the Star Dragon Tower with you, and I'm going to look for another way up until the very last instant." 

I sighed, then instantly regretted the loss of air. "And I'm not going to be able to stop you, am I?" 

"No, you aren't." Suddenly, she grinned. "And for a big bad demigod, you seem to have a lot of trouble stopping people." 

"Only if I don't want to hurt them," I said.


	23. Chapter 23

Azure glared at the Star Dragon Tower, hands on hips. "Well, the ambiance certainly hasn't improved." 

"Zophar never did have much taste," I agreed. 

The walls of the tall building in front of us were now violet-black, rather than silver-blue-grey, and the statues in the courtyard . . . Well, I'd seen uglier things. Once. In a Vile Tribe record of non-viable mutations. _And I thought the original statues were ugly. Of course, they were at least symmetrical, without all those extra horns and limbs and odd bits._

"Think we're going to have to fight those?" Azure said, nodding in the statues' direction. 

"Well, I doubt he left them there for no reason," I said. "Let's go." Although I'd never have admitted it, I wanted to get this over with before I lost my nerve. 

The statues did indeed animate themselves when we entered the courtyard. Ignoring Azure's request to save my energy and let her take care of things, I waded straight in with a Nitro Dagger, knowing that there was no point in conserving anything—I was probably generating more mana than I could hold, anyway. 

_More mana than I could hold . . ._ Why did that thought seem to nibble at the back of my mind? Determinedly, I put it aside and dodged a flailing tentacle. Time enough for puzzles later—if I was going to be locked up with Zophar for millennia, I was going to need something to occupy my mind. 

A few moments later, Azure and I were standing in the middle of a pile of disconnected stone blocks. The Blue Dragon grinned at me as she sheathed her twin swords. I gave her a sober nod. Together, we turned and began to walk toward the entrance to the Tower proper. 

The mirrors and living statues populating the lower floors were worse-tempered but really no more dangerous than they had been on the occasion of our previous visit, and we made short work of them—even more so because Azure and I were learning to coordinate our attacks as though we'd been comrades for a long time. 

_It's almost like having you alive again, and fighting at my side,_ I told Dyne's ghost. _I hope you approve._

It wasn't until we reached the base of the stairs that led up to the seventh floor and the Star Dragon's lair that we really paused for breath. I swiped my hand absently across my face, chasing an itch, and was disturbed to see a smear of blood across my knuckles when I lowered it. I hadn't even noticed that I'd been cut. 

"It's only a scratch," Azure said, reaching over toward me and murmuring a healing spell. "Still, I _do_ keep telling you to wear your helmet." She punctuated the statement by producing the offending article and pushing it into my hands. "Wouldn't do to get your brains scrambled before you even get as far as Zophar." 

I sighed and surrendered. "All right, then." It wasn't, after all, nearly as heavy as the one I'd worn as the Magic Emperor, so it probably wouldn't obscure my vision . . . I pushed my hair out of the way and slid it on . . . and froze as I felt a mass of previously quiescent spells activate themselves. 

"Ghaleon?" 

"Just more of Quark's . . . art," I said. Spells to enhance perception and clarity of thought. Amazingly complex and delicate. I wished I had time to analyze them . . . well, I'd be taking the armour with me, so there would be time for that, too. "Shall we?" 

There was a bend in the staircase that hadn't been there before—Zophar had been meddling with the architecture. Forewarned, we advanced cautiously up the last few steps . . . and emerged, not onto the seventh floor, but onto a rooftop that was easily twice as broad as the tower supporting it. 

"If he ever lets the illusion hiding this from below lapse, it's going to look like a giant mushroom," I observed. 

Azure smothered a laugh. "The Star Dragon is going to be annoyed." 

I shook my head. "I don't think so. In fact, I doubt that the Star Dragon is ever going to be annoyed at anything again." And I stepped aside so that she could see what I'd been hiding from her with my body. 

Only the bones were left, and they'd been strewn artistically around the remains of the transport mechanism that had once been on the topmost floor. 

"It . . . The son of a bitch really . . . The Star Dragon may have been an arrogant old bastard, but _this_ wasn't really necessary," Azure said, her hands wrapped around the hilts of her swords in a white-knuckled grip. 

"Necessity had nothing to do with it," Zophar's voice boomed from overhead. "I was _able_ to kill him, and so I did." 

"In the process, cutting us off from Lucia," I added. 

"That may have been a consideration, yes. I didn't expect to be so fortunate as to have you come running right back to me the moment you knew where I was, Ghaleon—I thought I might need some bait. And now I'm curious. Are you really that eager to explore the inside of my old prison? We both know that you can't win against me." 

"That rather depends on the conditions I set myself for winning, doesn't it?" I asked with a smirk. "Now, drop your illusion— _I_ can tell that you're facing us from the other side of the roof," thanks to Quark's spells, "but Azure may not be having quite so easy a time." 

"And you want your dragon lover to witness your defeat? Very well." 

To my surprise, before I could reply, Azure snapped, "I'm not his lover . . . yet." 

Zophar chuckled as his illusion dissipated. "Ever, you mean. Why should you be permitted happiness?" the giant blue figure added with sudden bitterness. 

I snorted. "Don't tell me you've done all this because you were unlucky in love." 

A blue hand made an airy gesture. "Merely a minor contributing factor, I assure you. Even watching her get clubbed to death by her own parents probably wouldn't have set me on quite this course if I hadn't been headed in this direction already. But you didn't come here to talk about me." 

I shrugged, then half-smiled as something Dyne had once said floated back to me across time. "Given that I've been accused in the past of having insatiable curiosity, and most records of your history seem to have been lost, I'm not likely to object to the topic." Or to drawing out the conversation as long as possible, given what I knew was coming next. 

"Interesting. You come here in a hurry . . . and then you stall. Trying to keep me here so that your Vile Tribe ally and your baby Dragonmaster can attack me from some other direction? Well, let them come. It won't do you any good." 

"You can't even tell that they're not coming? I'm shocked." Reluctantly, I drew my sword. _I have to make this look good._

" _Now_ we're getting somewhere," Zophar said gleefully, and with a keyword, threw a cloud of fire at me. 

The battle consisted mostly of elemental spells, thrown back and forth at a distance. Neither Azure nor I bothered to close physically, although I suspected that Zophar's physical defenses were lousy and we could easily have killed him that way . . . except that that would have made things more difficult, not easier. If we killed him, we'd just have to fight both this battle _and_ the previous one again. I wasn't willing to bet on my ability to imprison a disembodied consciousness, but so long as he remained physical, I could make one of the spells in my mother's grimoire, intended to draw a creature toward the caster, apply. I just needed to pick exactly the right moment in which to spring it, and in the meanwhile conserve as much of my strength as possible without making it _look_ like I was doing so. 

We'd been at it for half an hour or so when I gave Azure a meaningful sidelong glance. _Don't interfere._ She winced and closed her eyes. I was just as glad that she didn't want to watch—making this next bit look real was going to be difficult enough without my having to worry about what her reaction might give away. 

When Zophar's next shot—fire, again—came, I used a spell much weaker than my beloved Nitro Dagger in a false attempt to neutralize it, and was flung back against the floor, slightly charred around the edges. I wasn't badly harmed, thanks to the white dragon armour and my own natural resistance to magic, but I made a show of levering myself to my feet using my sword. _I never suspected myself of such thespian abilities,_ I thought as Zophar laughed in delight. 

"Getting a bit tired, cousin? Perhaps you'd like your girlfriend to take over for you for a little while?" 

"I have no intention of risking anyone's life here but my own," I snarled—all the more realistically, I hoped, because it was true. 

The next spell he cast was the nasty one that Ruby had described to us what felt like half a lifetime ago, the one that she had claimed always took someone down. I whispered the keyword of a spell that I hoped would blunt it without blocking it, but—Barren Earth!—it was still monstrously strong. I wasn't just knocked backward—I bounced at least three times. Then I lay there, feigning being stunned, although one of the spells on my armour had flared up to prevent that. 

Something huge and blue loomed over me. "Hmph. Strange—after the way you outwitted me before, I thought you were smart, Ghaleon. Guess you were really just lucky." 

I continued my stunned act as a huge hand closed around me and lifted me up. 

"Well, then," Zophar said with a smirk. "Let's see . . ." The keyword he ended that with opened up a rip in the sky. "Good-bye, Ghaleon. I don't expect we'll ever see each other again, since you'll no more be able to tear through Althena's magical walls than any other dragon." 

_Than any other dragon . . ._ The words seemed to reverberate in my head. _Of course!_

The difference between a dragon and a hybrid like myself or Zophar was the ability to _store and concentrate_ mana—an ability which increased with use. 

The spell Lucia had cast on me in an attempt to open me to my potential had been intended for use on normal dragons- -I was probably _producing_ as much mana now as I ever would, but most of it was also probably leaking away just as a true dragon's production would. 

Coming up with a way to fix the problem wasn't difficult—like the draw-creature-to-caster spell, it had been right there in my mother's grimoire all along: a spell that, like Altus' mana-puppet enchantment, was intended to concentrate the thin mana of the Frontier, but into a person, not an area. There were a few similar spells on record in Vane, but they had all been designed so that the caster couldn't draw more mana than he could hold. The Vile Tribe spell lacked those safeguards. Cast it, and it would go on filling me until there was either no more mana in range . . . or I burst. 

_This is going to hurt._

I hadn't thought to analyze that particular spell for a keyword, so I was going to have to cast it at full length. And before I did that, I had to get loose, since I doubted there was any mana inside Zophar's prison for me to concentrate. 

A keyword drove a spear of ice into the palm of Zophar's hand, and the huge blue being snarled . . . and reflexively opened his fingers, which was what I'd been hoping for. I landed on my feet, jarred but essentially unharmed, and sprinted for Azure's end of the roof. I didn't have to make it all the way there, though. The Blue Dragon was running to meet me. 

"Cover me for a couple of minutes," I said as we both skidded to a halt to avoid crashing into each other. "I have an idea, of sorts." 

Azure flashed me a quick grin, full of hope. "Right." Then her face became serious again, and she leapt into the air, taking her full adult dragon form. 

Instead of watching, I forced myself to close my eyes and concentrate on remembering the text on a page that I'd read only in passing. Inevitably, my first attempt at the spell fell apart because I'd forgotten to account for the fact that it had been written down using the conventions of the Vile Tribe, and not those of humanity. Too tired even to curse, I took a deep breath and began again. 

_Yes._

My eyes snapped open as I . . . felt _ripples_ in the local mana field—a most extraordinary sensation. Ripples centering on me. _Which makes me the drain in the mana pool, I suppose,_ I thought with a snort for the stupidity of the analogy. 

It took only seconds for me to begin feeling uncomfortably swollen, and I braced myself for the pain I knew was coming. Pressure, ah Althena, enough pressure to make me feel like my mind was going to burst . . . 

And then it did. 

I think that it was only the supportive spells on my armour that kept me conscious. The pain was worse than what Lucia had done to me. It felt like being submerged in a river of molten lava, and then somehow remaining alive and conscious as my skin and flesh burned away. 

Any spell I tried to channel such a mass of power into would unravel even as I spoke the keyword, and throwing it into an attack spell . . . I was beginning to understand what had to have happened to the Blue Star. 

_Attack Zophar like this, and I'll destroy Lunar anyway. How can I shield . . . ?_ It was difficult to think through the pain. I opened my eyes and looked blearily around. Azure was in the air, throwing water and lightning spells at Zophar, who was countering mostly with wind. And by the blue colossus' shoulder, the rift that led into his old prison gaped. 

_Of course._

I mumbled the keyword of a teleportation spell and somehow managed to hold it together until it spat me out in midair, right in front of the rift. Somehow, I managed to catch the edge of the sky with my gauntletted hands and pull myself up to straddle the impossibly thin surface without cutting anything in half . . . although I suspected it was a good thing that I was already in so much pain that I just couldn't register any more. Then I spoke the keyword of the draw-creature spell, using the appropriate hand gesture to aim it at Zophar. 

At first, he didn't seem to realize what was happening . . . probably because I felt like I was trying to move a dragon barehanded until I gritted my teeth and siphoned a bit more power into the casting. Controlling the flow so that the spell didn't rupture instead took nearly all my concentration, to the point that, when Zophar finally did start to move, he knocked me off my perch and back into the darkness beyond the rift in the sky. Well, I'd been intending to enter the place anyway, and since it didn't seem to have a floor, it barely even mattered that it wasn't under my own power. 

Zophar and I tumbled together down into darkness, although we floated rapidly to a stop not more than ten feet or so down from the rift that led back out into Lunar. Somehow, I managed to get a boot on my opponent's thigh and use him to boost myself back up toward the light. 

And now came the moment of truth. Since there was no spell I could cast that would channel all the power available to me, I attacked Zophar in the same way as he had attacked me in our earlier confrontation: with raw mana. 

Naturally, he countered in kind, and as the two waves of power clashed in midair, I felt a twinge of doubt. _Was_ I now the stronger, or . . . ? 

Then Zophar's power began to crumble under mine. I smiled and, if anything, bore down even harder. We sustained our disembodied souls with mana, so if I emptied him completely, threw in enough power that every ounce of what he generated went into opposing me, he should dissipate once his body was destroyed. 

In emptiness we struggled, power to power. Zophar was frantically throwing everything he had into the contest, but he couldn't stop the inevitable. Gradually, the point of contact was moving back toward him. I pushed harder, sweat running down my brow—odd that I could feel that despite the pain, as though the light tickling was in some way worse than agony. 

Suddenly, Zophar's resistance crumbled, and the impact when the wave of power I was sending out reached him flung us further apart. Faintly, I heard words as his giant blue body disintegrated into motes of sparkling dust. 

" _Damn you for a goddess-serving fool,_ cousin _. Do you have any idea what they'll do to you now?_ " 

I didn't say it aloud, but as I was blown back through the closing tear in space, the thought crossed my mind that at least "they" would be there to do it, which was more than would have been the case if Zophar had had his way. I meant to voice the keyword of a teleportation spell instead, but suddenly I was just too tired and in too much pain. Lacking the focus of my battle with Zophar, my mind and body were giving in to the hell I'd just put them through. 

I fell straight down about twenty feet, and landed flat on my back on the roof of the altered Star Tower with what should have been a devastating crunch. In a hazy way, I noted that I hated to think what I'd broken, but any pain that might have been derived from that simply merged into what I'd already been feeling. The tickling sensation in my chest as blood began to leak into my lungs bothered me more. 

Azure landed beside me, hard enough to make the tower shake. "—wasn't quick enough—sorry—" I could only make out about half of the words she was saying, because dragons are as likely as humans to become incoherent when they cry. 

I smiled and met her eyes. "Wait for me," I whispered, coughed blood . . . and died. 

This time, I was aware of being . . . somewhere . . . during the time between incarnations, although I'm damned if I can describe it. The closest I can come is to say that it was something like Zophar's prison, except that instead of floating in darkness, I floated in soft light, disoriented and unable to measure the passage of time, but not truly uncomfortable. My efforts to somehow reach past that place while I was in it weren't successful, and I hate to think how much time Zophar must have spent there experimenting before he learned how to access Lunar and the Blue Star before being properly revived—clearly, there's a trick to it. 

Then, some immeasurable period later, I felt my consciousness being gently pulled in an indescribable direction, and I wasn't so enamoured of the place that I was about to fight it. I was tugged through blackness and out into somewhere warm and damp. 

As true consciousness slowly filtered back, I became aware that I was lying curled on my side on top of something irregular, scaly, and warm. _What?_ Then, blinking my eyes open, I saw blue, and began to chuckle softly. _I think I begin to understand the pattern: returning to life, I end up at the location of whatever I regretted most at the moment I left it._ The Goddess Tower, Pentagulia . . . and now, the Blue Dragon Cave. 

"Mmph? What's so funny?" Azure stirred, opening her eyes. "Ghaleon!" 

"Careful," I said, feeling her muscles start to surge. "Let me get down before you get up, or you might crush me." 

"Sorry, it's just that I'm so happy to see you—and everyone else will be, too." 

"How long was I . . . gone?" I asked, swinging a leg over her side so that I could slide to the floor. 

"A little more than four months." Once I wasn't lying on her anymore, Azure uncoiled and stretched, then took her human form. 

"Hmph. I guess my time is improving," I said, hesitated, then, filled with morbid curiosity, asked the question I was wondering about anyway. "What did you do with . . . the body?" 

"Buried it quietly, in an unmarked grave out in the middle of the Frontier. Altus seemed to think it was the best way to avoid confusion if you showed up again soon, and Meloth and I couldn't come up with anything better." 

"We're going to have to be careful with the corpses," I admitted. "And I'm going to have to figure something out about clothes, so that if I land in the middle of the Frontier next time, at least I won't be naked when I do it." 

"I see what you mean, although it seems like a shame. I kind of like you this way." 

I snorted. "You would. How are things in Vane?" 

"Altus, Zaile, Ludus, and Lira seem to be managing between them, but practically every time I see them, they're moaning that there's something they really wish you were there to look at." 

"Can't anyone around here get _anything_ done without me?" I asked, rolling my eyes. 

Azure grinned. "Apparently not. But before you run off to check on them, there's something I need to do." 

"Oh?" 

Suddenly, I was being treated to a bone-cracking hug and an equally enthusiastic kiss. 

"Welcome back," Azure whispered in my ear when she finally let me come up for air. 

I hugged her back. "Thank you." 

** The End. **


End file.
